One of the coolest things about this little farmette here is we have a huge number of wineberry bushes just...everywhere on the property. What is a wineberry? Well, I'll tell ya. Wineberries are bramble fruit, they grow wild on the edge of woods. They aren't actually berries at all, but an aggregate of druplets, and their canes are prickly but not too bad (nothing like a blackberry, which will eff you up). They were introduced to America in the late 1800s as a cultivator for raspberries, but they are invasive, so they pretty much got out of hand quick. Now they are everywhere out here. The berries are sweet and tart and have a sort of citrus taste. And every year, on the 4th of July, like clockwork, they come ripe.
I remember the first summer we were here, and how delightful it was to discover them growing on the side of our woods. Free almost raspberries? FOR ME? Well, thanks, nature! Don't mind if I do. Over the years, we have found them growing all over the property, and that's basically their superpower. They are voraciously invasive, so they move around all the time. Sucks to be the local flora, but it's not like I can go out and get rid of them, so we try to just enjoy their sweet domination.
This year, we've got new patches growing underneath the pines, under a sycamore, and on both sides of the driveway. These new patches are especially wonderful because they are super accessible for picking. Most of our wineberry fields span back into the woods, and while it's an adventure to go picking every year, I am super okay with not having to wade back into them covered head to toe in protective gear right in the middle of summer. Now I can just browse the new areas barefoot and tank topped. It's awesome. (That said, I always take a hot, sudsy, scrubby shower and some benadryl after I get done picking. I'm really bad at recognizing poison oak/ivy, no reason to take chances.)
AND we still have the HUGE swaths of them behind the backyard and all the way down the hill, across the top of the gardens, and back around the woods. It's crazy how many we have here. It's not even accurate to say we are lousy with them...we are stupid with the wineberries. They are everywhere, and they are plentiful.
Each cane has a cluster of like 8 to 10 berries, and not all of them come ripe at the same time. On the 4th, you get the first wave of really ripe fruit, the darkest ruby red of them, and that's all you pick. You can come back in the coming weeks to pick more as they come ripe. They are the delicious gift that keeps giving, although after this week, the bugs will have also found them, so they become less awesome to pick and clean.
You would think with so many available berries to pick, I would be better about leaving a few on the vine, but I am ridiculously greedy about the wineberries. I will stand there and pick all the ripe berries I possible can before moving on to the next area. It's like an illness. There is absolutely NO WAY to get them all, seriously, it's impossible. As I move on, I always see a ton of them that I totally didn't get, and it makes me sad. But there are so many! Every year I get several big gallon bags of them before I get tired of picking, but it's never enough. I want them all! Oh, well.
My neighbor, Dorrie, has a saying that you plant some for you and some for nature (I think her representation is actually "god" but i don't swing that particular way). I guess that's what we're doing with the wineberries, leaving most of them for nature. That said, I'm not sure the deer actually like them very much, because I don't really see them eating them. But then, who can predict the vagaries of the deer appetite. I'm just happy they leave my gardens alone.
Anyhow, if you every come to visit us, make sure it's around the 4th of July, and we'll take you out picking. Tonight I think I will make some wineberry ice cream (as well as some mint chip with the wild mint growing around the garden), then I'll probably save the rest for jam in the fall (they freeze really well).
Oh! And as a special exaggeration point to our good fortune, I also found a bunch of new paw paw trees at the base of the woods, and they've all got fruit on them! So come September, we'll have to try those, too. Thank you, nature! You rock!
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