One of my childhood memories is picking wild blueberries and lingon berries (if you ever have been on IKEA that is the jam they serve with the meatballs).
Well, living in a big city, the closest I get to wild blueberries is at the farmers market. Nothing wrong with that, but for a wild crafter it is not quite the same. There is something special about harvesting Nature’s bounty. Luckily, I’m not the only one feeling like this in North America. In Los Angeles there is an organization called Fallen Fruit. They have created a map of neighborhoods in the US that shows the location fruit trees that the public can pick. In Toronto we have a group called Not Far from the Tree . They pick fruit from forgotten trees and give it to food banks that would otherwise go to waste.
I was inspired by an article about mulberries on foodmapper season and friends teaching me about the berries. I soon discovered Toronto is full of mulberries trees and most of it goes to waste. If you never have tasted mulberry it taste like a cross between a raspberry and blueberries. – Quite tasty…
Go Mulberry picking
Bring a rake and a sheet or newspapers and lots of eager hands.Start with you and your kids picking the closest branches. If you can reach a branch shake it, with newspaper or a sheet or tarp under it. Hopefully you get the ripe berries down. We had to use a rake to reach up to the branches and shake them down.
Picking mulberries adventure did not give us tons of berries, but my daughter had a lot of fun and other kids in the neighborhood started to join us in our picking. All those little hands were very proud of their harvest.
This is what we made out of our mulberries
We also made (for us adults) mulberry liquor for Christmas.
