Wild berries, one bear and a pie

[Okanagan]

Went out in the heat to look for the little indigenous wild blackberries, smaller and scarcer but much better tasting than the invasive big Himalayan blackberries that have taken over the PNW.   Only found one patch with berries, the others all burned up to dry husks before they made a berry.  Picked a little over a gallon.

Some other wild berries are producing a bumper crop, surprisingly.  Blackcaps and thimble berries are the most abundant I've seen.  They must like the hot dry weather.

Saw one bear in near 90 degree heat about 1:00 pm.  When I've seen bears out in that kind of heat at that time of day, it has always been in drought conditions when they have to work at it all day to get enough to eat.  Bad sign.  Skinny youngish bear, ratty coat, long tall legs, and he did a slow motion lope across a wide pull out in the logging road about 20 yards in front of me, barely moving in the heat.    He was at low elevation.  There wasn't much bear sign up higher where the black caps and thimble berries are.  Maybe bears don't like them any more than I do.

Wild blackberries below.








Himalayan blackberries below, an invasive species that take over.



Black caps below.  Kind of a cross between a raspberry and a thimble berry.  Good taste to me, not great.   Some people love them.





Thimble berry below.  Bland slightly sweet taste with a trace of fuzziness.





Will post pics of the pie in another installment.

[Okanagan]

Stages of construction...





This requires high quality French Vanilla ice cream and good coffee. 

[HuntnCarve]

You certainly earned that pie Clyde.   Thanks for taking us along.  I can remember as a boy picking blackberries with an old retired fellow up at his camp.  His wife would then spend hours cooking them into the best Blackberry jelly I ever ate.  I can remember working my way around a hillside berry picking.  When I jumped a black bear.  Don't know who ran faster in opposite directions.    Thanks for the memories!

Dave

[Dave]

I sure do like the looks of that end product!
The blackberries around here are not too tasty.  Probably those Himalayan ones, and probably 2 to 3 times as big as the berries sitting inside the piecrust above.

[Okanagan]

Dave & Dave, wish you were here to sample this pie with me.

We have two kinds of non-native blackberry that take over along road ditches, vacant lots, whole pastures in places.   Both produce great big berries hard to tell apart.  One, our Himalaya, tastes pretty good and the other has poor flavor and tends to a slightly cylinder shaped berry rather than round.  The good one has a pointed oval leaf and the off-flavor plant has kind of an arrowhead leaf deeply notched on both sides.  Both kinds grow 8 feet tall in impenetrable masses with vines climbing higher on trees and buildings. 

Dave, how goes the battle with Lyme disease?

[Dave]

The first three days were tough, then just a bad headache for a few more.  I'm feeling fine now - just low energy - not sure if that's due to the Lyme or not.  My brother has since been diagnosed with it and is in the first few days of antibiotics.  Says his energy is zero.

Now I have to go look at those blackberry leaves.