It's about that time of year...

To go berry picking for your summer pies, tarts, and jams! It's still strawberry season in the North, and on to blueberries in the South. Raspberries, black raspberries, and blackberries will be ready soon.

The pictures above are from the Oregon State University Archives, and feature berry pickers on Oregon "victory farms" in 1946.

*Top: "Kneeling is Stanley Boyer -- one of the best strawberry pickers in the Portland area. His record was 21 crates of strawberries in a 6 hour day."
*Middle: "Joan Renner, 15 years old, from West Linn, is transferring blackcaps from her picking carrier to a crate on the John Phillips farm in the Carus community of Clackamas County."
*Bottom: " Portland Victory Farm Volunteer raspberry picking platoon at lunch at a farm near Troutdale, Oregon."

Happy summer solstice and happy picking!

3 Nights of Blackberry Desserts

During my last week at Rokeby, Howie discovered a plentiful blackberry bramble behind the white house. It was probably the most fruitful berry patch I have ever foraged from, and the fruits of our labor yielded 3 nights of blackberry desserts. First we enjoyed a blackberry-ginger cobbler.
For the biscuit topping I used a recipe for "Yankee Biscuits" I got from Clara. It is as follows:
Yankee Biscuits
3 c. flour
2 Tblsp. sugar
2 Tblsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 stick cold butter
1 1/2 c. cold milk

Combine dry, cut in butter until consistency of cornmeal & peas. Add milk, stir gently. Place on floured board and knead 14 times. Roll out into 1-inch. Cut and bake for 15 minutes in 425 degree oven.
I just rolled out the biscuit topping, and placed it on top of the blackberry filling, which I had poured into a cake pan. We enjoyed it a la mode, after Louis' delicious fish stew. The second night, I made a blackberry rustic tart, topped with Sam Comfort's honey from Anarchy Apiaries. It was basically a pie with a thrown-together/less-artful crust. And for the last night and a Big House-Yellow House Cookout with guest Diane Cook, I made a blackberry-ginger pie, washed with a brilliant orange egg from the hens of Shoving Leopard farm. The fillings of all three were riffs on the recipe used here, with ginger or honey added. Eggwashed and baked, with a poem...
Blackberry Pie
by Jennifer Rae Vernon

is kernels of juice
blue, mom makes it do
magic heat to vanilla ice cream
purple dream

there were many nice things,
the corduroy pinafore
the daily notes in lunch sack
of a smiley face and curly cue hair
your mama loves you, and do great
with a thermos of homemade soup

dad too, he rocked me on front porch
after seven yellow jacket stings
i howled through the valley
in baking soda paste
while he sang, in the big rock candy mountain...

but just like grandma vernon always said
don't bother doing anything nice for your children
they'll only remember the bad things, anyway
like when she tethered my dad
to the front yard tree
so he could play when she was at work

was that bad? a ruined childhood?
bless her heart
and pie too, is sometimes
tart

Blueberry Pie on the 4th of July

The 4th of July kicked off my summer month of farming, baking, berries, and friends at Rokeby. Matt arrived by train from the city the night before, and after a morning of weeding in the garden and burritos at Bubby's, the 4 of us headed to Grieg's to pick a bucketfull bounty of blueberries for the evening's pies and the buckles and ice cream to be made later.

After a few rounds of bags, a few rounds of beers, and lying in the grass, we set to make the pies before the fireworks started. Matt wanted to try his hand at the crust (using the recipe at right) and I tackled the filling.

Here's the approximate recipe I used, for 1 pie: 

 Combine the following:
At least 6 cups fresh berries, washed and de-stemmed
3 Tblsp. corn starch or arrowroot
1 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. lemon zest
1/4 tsp. salt
Splash of lemon juice
 
Pour into bottom crust, and cut a lattice top (HINT: use a ruler or some other guide so your strips are approx. the same width), wash with a fresh and golden Shoving Leopard Farm egg! Bake for 10 min. at 425, then reduce heat to 350 and bake 35-40 min. longer until crust is golden and flaky, and filling is bubbly. 

We put them in the oven, and went up the dark spiral staircase to the tower, to watch the fireworks from various towns across the Hudson. We all saw a ghost on our descent.

Then we celebrated the birthday of Marina, France, and the USA in the PEZ.

Blackberry: Picking. Eating. Pie

Blackberry-picking
by Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

On Sunday afternoon Julia and I ventured down to _____(undisclosed location) to pick blackberries. On the way, we were distracted by a small patch of beautiful pink thimble berries! We picked a few and then made our way to the blackberry patch, where there was an immense cache of berries--plump and DRIPPING off of the bushes! The picking was INTENSE--with recent heavy rains, the mosquitos are attacking in swarms and droves. We wore long pants and long sleeved shirts buttoned up to the top button (both for the thorns and the bugs), and slathered ourselves with bug balm, but it was not much use. To be able to stand it, we had to be entirely intent on the picking, not even allowing ourselves to be distracted by jokes or chit chat. We needed stamina, focus and determination. Julia compared it to the Olympics (Berry Picking: London 2012!). But we battled through the bugs, heat and impending thunderstorm, and walked away, scratched and bitten, but triumphant with 7 yogurt containers-full.

Blackberry Eating
by Galway Kinnell
I love to go out in late September
among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
to eat blackberries for breakfast,
the stalks very prickly, a penalty
they earn for knowing the black art
of blackberry making; and as I stand among them
lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
like strengths or squinched or broughamed,
many-lettered, one syllabled lumps,
which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
in the silent, startled, icy, black language
of blackberry eating in late September.

Once I got home, 2 of the containers were immediately washed and of course, prepared for pie.

I adapted the filling recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's Blackberry pie recipe in The Pie & Pastry Bible. 

Blackberry Pie
Ingredients
Nothing-in-the-House pie crust
7 c. FRESH blackberries
3/4 c. white sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
2.5 Tblsp. arrowroot (thickener)
pinch of salt
2 tsp. lemon zest
pinch ginger
2 Tbslp. lemon juice

Directions
1. Prepare Nothing-in-the-House Pie crust as per the directions.

2. Mix sugar, arrowroot, salt, lemon zest, and ginger. Then add lemon juice and berries.

I had some leftover pie-crust dough (whole wheat) in the fridge, which I used for a nice, yet incomplete, lattice top. This was my first time using arrowroot as a thickener, and I like its effect. It doesn't leave behind any taste and is more 'natural' (less processed) than corn starch. Next time I might use a little more as the pie was rather runny:



SP came over with vanilla ice cream, along with Mandy, Graham, Julia, and Katy. We had some snacks (ginger tea, cucumber-olive salad by Mandy, tomato chutney and rhubarb-ginger jam by Julia) and then entered the Pie Enjoyment Zone.

SP, Julia & Graham in the PEZ

Katy in the PEZ & Mandy in the non-PEZ/COSPEZ.

After the pie, we headed to the Firehouse for the Greg Davis & Eric Chenaux show, which was really lovely-- if you were to think of what the appropriate music would be to depict the blackberry poems above, this might have been it.

Blueberry Pie

Last week on Erik and Abra's first day in Burlington, we met Mandy, Greg and Sara-Paule at Adam's Berry Farm to pick blueberries. Since Erik grew up in Chicago, filling his schedule with daily visits to the Art Institute, Holograph museum, and the Burghoff, he never had time for berry picking. This was his first time.

After a visit to Healthy City and a pizza rampage at Flatbread--where we were joined by Dale and Julia-- Erik, Abra, Sara-Paule and I retired to the halfway house to bake a duet of blueberry pies. Sara-Paule had asked me to teach her in the art of pie making in exchange for her teaching me the art of ravioli making.

Above: SP cuts her mandala-top crust
Below: Lattice top in the oven
SP puts finishing touches on the mandala top
baked mandala top
baked lattice top

Abra prepared the filling, with flour, sugar, salt, and vanilla (we didn't have a lemon, though it is highly recommended in blueberry pie filling!) and I showed SP my crust recipe. I did a lattice top, and SP made a mandala-top. Prior to baking, we brushed on an egg wash, and sprinkled the crusts with turbinado sugar.

I cut the lattice top

We enjoyed the pie with single-serving milks (courtesy of Healthy City), while listening to Steeleye Span and playing Scrabble. Erik won, but he was also reading the "10 ways to become a Scrabble expert" guide while playing.

SP snatched her pie from the windowsill the next morning, Erik enjoyed some for breakfast, and I took pieces to work for Mandy and me.