Blackberry Mojo

It's been a good day for picking blackberries! Last night I found an ad on Craigslist for U-pick blackberries, $1 per pound. So bright and early this morning I gave them a call and made arrangements to pick. I drove 1 1/2 hours to New Plymouth, Idaho and spent about 90 minutes picking these monsters.

 

I plugged in my MP3 player and listened to my e-audio book while I picked. I did not know these folks so I let plenty of people know where I was going and a time I thought I would be done. Turns out the folks were very nice and even charged me tax so I was fairly certain they were trying for a legitimate self pick farm.

 

It didn't take too long to fill all the buckets I took with me and I ended up with 21 pounds of berries. I have honestly never seen blackberries like these before. They were huge. The owners told me they were planted 2 years ago and that they were a variety called Apache. They were truly the ugliest blackberries I have ever seen but they were firm and juicy and the vines were thorn less.  Well, maybe not really ugly but not attractive, just giant. I am freezing them on cookie sheets now and will vacuum seal them with my foodsaver in a little while. I plan to render them into juice when the other things I am harvesting are finished. I love using the steamer/juicer and then can them so I have a while before I need to make jelly out of it. It sounds like a lot of steps but it really does save me time.