A berry nice reason to get out picking

IT’S the season of mellow fruitfulness with all sorts of superb wild food available after what has been a good year in terms of both heat and moisture, creating ideal conditions for healthy growth.

Nothing reflected a bountiful harvest on our ditches better than the bramble and its fine crop of blackberries. Adults and children have been out picking blackberries – an old tradition which has been undergoing a revival in some rural areas. This is probably part of a pattern whereby people are returning to nature and natural things.

Blackberries make delicately-tasting jam and are also great in pies and puddings. Some stylish innovators people have also been known to flavour their evening martinis with blackberry.