It’s high time to connect with blackberries

It's blackberry season.

From mid-July through mid-August in this part of Pennsylvania, these tangled bushes yield juicy, purple-black goodness: a little tart, a lot of sweet, and a glorious color.

In the Patrick family, we do bleed - and sweat - for this relative of the rose. We're after the wild kind - Rubus allegheniensis - and their thorns exact a price from pickers.

There are easier ways:

The local supermarket has them - if sticker shock doesn't keel you over in the produce department.

You can get something local and fresh without breaking a sweat from farm markets and roadside stands.

And you can even ramble through the brambles without looking like you've fought a tomcat; many you-pick farms grow a thornless blackberry variety.

In fact, more Pennsylvania farmers are adding blackberries and other bramble berries, such as raspberries, to their repertoires, said Kathleen Demchak, bramble expert and senior Penn State University extension associate, who works in University Park.

"This is something a little different they can grow and get a good price for it," Demchak said.

The total acreage in commercial production remains small compared with many other crops, with only about 100 acres in blackberries out of 5 million acres of crops throughout the state.

But behind that small number is one of the beauties of these berries - it doesn't take a lot of room to grow enough to add a profitable crop to a farmer's mix. "There is a high value per acre of production," Demchak said.

Karen Field and her family planted blackberries and several other you-pick crops when they took over management of Styer's Orchards in Langhorne, Bucks County, seven years ago.

"The only pick-your-own when we took over was strawberries," Field said. But more and more customers said they wanted to do the picking. And Field noticed that blackberries had grown quite popular.

Farmer Susan Snipes-Wells, president of Snipes Farm and Golf in Morrisville, Bucks County, said her family started growing blackberries on their pick-your-own farm about 15 years ago, to add a crop that ripened in high summer.

"It's another crop you can fit in a small space, and it's lots easier than many other berries," Snipes-Wells said. "Blackberries are forgiving. There's no spraying with anything, really."

At Snipes, 600 thornless blackberry bushes grow on just a quarter-acre. Each one will produce three to five gallons of berries - bigger berries than those that grow in the wild.

"They fill your bowls really quickly. I like to tell people to make blackberry cobbler, blackberry jam, big stuff!"

Snipes grew up picking berries on her mother's family farm, turning them into jam and cobbler with her mom and grandmother.

"You remember their kitchens and what year you were doing what," she said. "When I was 8 years old, I was taking care of the babies. Then when I was older, I stemmed the berries. When I got to be 10 and 12, I could get in there and help make the jam."

Her daughters are now following some of the same recipes.

"Picking fruit and making things with fruit is one of the most amazing things to do with your kids on the planet," she said. "You are teaching them how things grow, where their food comes from. And then you are actually producing something, creating something of importance."

For me, too, picking blackberries is about way more than tasty fruit. I will pick some thornless domestics for jam, but a few weeks later, I'll head northwest to battle the prickly briars with Mom and Dad.

I did my first picking over my mother's shoulder, from my perch on her back.

By the time I was on the cusp of kindergarten, late in the summer of 1976, I was trusted with my own small bucket. We filled a white enameled washbasin to the brim - despite eating our fill as we plucked.