blackberries

May 19, 2020

In the late 19 th century Luther Burbank, a horticulturist in California, set out to breed a thornless blackberry plant. He acquired different blackberry seeds from around the world, including one small envelope he believed to be from India. These plants were fast growers—a single cane will grow up to 25 feet in one season, and the fruit is plentiful. He dubbed them Himalayan Giants, and knowing the plant would do well in the temperate climate of the Pacific Northwest, he began selling seeds up in Seattle.

For a time, people bought seeds and canes to put in their gardens, but as I’m sure the gardeners discovered within a year or two, Himalayans are extremely invasive. It didn’t take long for them to spread like a virus up and down the Northwest coast of the United States and Canada, as far south as California and as far west as the Cascade Mountains. The seeds were spread by birds and animals even after humans stopped planting them. Intricate root systems, invisible to humans, allowed the brambles to take over most of the region, where they were eventually classified as an invasive species. Even if the tip of a vine touches the ground, the plant will be able to spread further.

By the time my own family moved to Small Town, Oregon in 2009, the omnipresent brambles were a fact of life as much as the nine month rainy season and the towering fir trees. For most of the year they’re a nuisance. They take over empty lots and roadsides, climb up the walls of buildings and fences, choke out native plants and destroy carefully planned gardens. They’re difficult and painful to remove, and impossible to keep from spreading. I spent most of my childhood with scratches all over my ankles and shins from the brambles in our backyard.

Oregonians hate these invasive plants more than they hate bad coffee. But once a year, in August and September, people forget their hatred. Suddenly, every backyard, every empty lot or state park is unbelievably bountiful: tens of thousands of dark, rich berries, free for the picking. Walking past a thicket, you almost can’t help but pick and eat one or two or twenty of them. That being said, to be completely honest Himalayan Blackberries are just not that good. They’re small and not much more than a mouthful of seeds. Classy Oregonians prefer the good-for-the-environment, much-tastier, and much more expensive ($4 a pound to u-pick) marionberries — the official state berry of Oregon. But there’s something about those Himalayans that are so quintessential to the Pacific Northwestern experience—more than the marionberries. And they are just so free, that you have to find some use for them.

With pies, cobblers or even fruit smoothies you run into the problem of seeds. I’ve found that the best thing to do is make Himalayan Blackberry Jam. It’s a bit of a process. First, you have to pick all the berries—the best ones always seem to be just out of reach, too high up, or too deep within the thorny vines. I always need to go to a handful of places to pick the truckload needed even for a small quantity of jam—the grounds around my old high-school, the trails around the Chehalem Golf Course, and on the banks of Hess Creek, which flows through my parents backyard.

Once the berries are picked, they have to be washed, boiled down, strained for seeds and boiled down some more over a hot stove in a hot kitchen on one of the hottest days of the year. But in the end, you get this jewel-toned mason jar full of something sweet that tastes of summer and of the Pacific Northwest. It can be canned and given as a gift to loved ones or saved for the gloomy winter months.

Right now, quarantined on a college campus three thousand miles away from my family and from my home, I find myself feeling nostalgic for those days spent gathering free berries in empty lots and creek canyons. I miss being that girl, squinting and sunburned in the breathless August heat, fingers stained with dark juice. I want to be that girl again, the girl who reached deep into the thorns and took hold of that small seedy fruit.

This is a very simple, flexible recipe. If you don’t have access to Himalayan Blackberries, almost any berry, fresh or frozen, can be subbed in. We’ve done Blackberry, Raspberry, Blackberry-Raspberry and even Blueberry following this basic recipe. These berries naturally contain a lot of pectin, and will gel up fairly easily with just sugar, but the acidity from lemon juice (or lime, if you prefer) helps bring more depth to the flavor.

Ingredients:
Blackberries
Sugar
Lemon Juice

Preparation:

Wash your (free) berries and pick out any leaves or twigs. Place the whole berries into a saucepan over medium heat. Once they begin to release their juice, turn off the heat. Place a metal strainer over a large bowl, and use a ladle to press the berries through. Discard the seeds. (Please do not compost. Maybe burning them with fire would be best?)

Measure the juice and put it back into the saucepan. The amount of juice will dictate how much sugar you need. I use a 2:1 ratio of juice to sugar, so if you come out with 6 cups of juice you will need 3 cups of sugar, etc. Add the sugar to the saucepan along with a couple tablespoons of lemon juice, stir and place over medium heat.

Continue stirring frequently.

You will know the jam is done when it reaches 220 degrees Farenheit on a candy thermometer. (If you don’t have a candy thermometer, you can spoon a few drops of the jam mixture onto a frozen plate. If the drops gel up and don’t run, then the jam is ready.) You can then go on to can the jam, but we usually use ours up so quickly it isn’t necessary.

Serving Suggestion:

This jam goes great on toast or in peanut butter sandwiches, but could also be used in thumbprint cookies, or as a layer in coffee cake. One year, my youngest sister made these fabulous homemade Blackberry Breakfast Buns (Think cinnamon rolls, but with blackberry jam as the filling instead of butter and cinammon-sugar). If you accidently take the jam off the heat too early, and it isn’t quite thick enough (I’ve done this. More than once.) then it makes a delicious syrup for pancakes or waffles or a sauce to pour over ice cream.

Jessica Harris is a senior History major at Salem State University with a public history concentration and a proud Oregonian.

This post is part of a series of student reflections by Salem State's Spring 2020 Introduction to Public History students.