Wild Blackberries

We have plenty of blackberries growing wild in patches all around our little farm.  We have places where there used to be thick gorse and now there is thick blackberry.

Last year, I asked a friend who grew up on a Berry farm, what the difference was between wild and commercial blackberries.  He said thorns.  The commercial varieties have been bred to be mostly thornless.  There was a disease called Dryberry introduced as an attempt to control wild blackberry.  It affects them sometimes and also affects the commercial varieties.  We saw a little bit of it in our wild berries last year, but not so much this year.

I went for a walk on Sunday to have a look at the blackberries.  I was quite surprised to see that there were some ripening.  I started to pick them, not entirely sure how much I’d find.  One berry from each bunch, just in one patch, gave me 240g of berries, which was more than I’d thought.

I decided to try making blackberry cordial and set out on Google to find a recipe.  The first 6 or 7 recipes all sounding truly yummy but contained vodka or brandy.  I wanted something I could give to Miss Seven.

I finally added the words “alcohol free” to my search terms.  I found one that was pretty straight forward.

Blackberry Cordial (alcohol free)

400g blackberries

1 litre water

300g sugar

Wash berries and place all ingredients into a heavy based pan.  Bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 mins.  Strain and bottle.

It tastes very nice, we all liked it.

The alcohol based version was to soak the blackberries with cinnamon, cloves and/or allspice with sugar (half the volume of the blackberries - so 4 cups of berries was 2 cups of sugar) in 1 1/2 cups of vodka or brandy for 2 - 4 weeks. Strain and bottle.

I may yet try this one too - a grown up cordial and a child-friendly cordial.

Yesterday, I went berry picking again.  This time I picked half a kilo of wild blackberries.  I’ve made a second batch of child-friendly cordial - this time I added the juice and peel of one orange.  It’s a little sweeter and tastes better than the first batch.  I’m considering adding apple peel to the berries for my next batch.

We’re also considering growing the blackberries up the fences.  That would keep them controlled, more easily accessible and provide shelter in the paddocks.  Multi-purpose is always good.  I don’t think they’d require a great deal of care either.  They’re taking over the more untamed land we have quite successfully as it is, with no help from anyone.