Blackberries!

It's not every day you get to travel back in time and pretend you're a frontiers woman. (I made that up. Don't know if frontiers woman is an actual term but it's at least descriptive, right?!)

The past two Sundays we've gone blackberry picking! I remembered to bring my camera this week, so I was able to capture some photos of us in all our berry-stained wonder.

Entrance at Westfork

Getting ready to go into the woods from our nicely manicured national park setting.

This is a blackberry bramble. If you're not familiar, the berries grow on bushes with thorns like roses. The bush can have a clump of blackberries that are green, red, and black in the same clump and the berries like to hide underneath the leaves. Jeans, long shirts and boots are recommended.

Sorry, forgot to make my sister right side up before I uploaded the photo :(

This is how tall a blackberry bramble can be. Which makes it quite fun to try to tromp through to reach that perfect  berry that is always just. out. of. arms. length!

Oh, the goodness waiting to be discovered and eaten...!

Fruits of our labor

We retrieved 3.5 gallons of blackberries for our three hours of labor. Several scratches, many pokes, and lots of berry-stained mouths were also acquired!

Yum!!

Isaiah will eat most of these before we can freeze them to be used all winter... but it makes him happy and that makes me happy!

Well, Isaiah may not be the only one in our family who threatens the winter blackberry cooking... 

You've got to watch out for the sour ones. They go from delicious sweetness to tart really fast if you get one that wasn't completely ripe!

Hm... How can I get more blackberries???

I love Westfork, the area we picked, even without the blackberries.  Before last Sunday I hadn't been blackberry picking since high school, so I'm very happy to be back in the brambles and introducing the rest of my family to this adventure.