Dewberries

I love dewberries.  There are alot of people who are not familiar with them.  We used to find them along the side of the road or growing along the railroad tracks.  I grew up picking and eating them so I just "assumed" that everyone knew what they were.  Well we all know what you get for assuming.  I've met a few people lately that aren't familiar with them.

Dewberries are in the blackberry family.  The difference is that instead of growing on upright branches, they grow on stems that trail along the ground. The vines have tiny stickers and can really "get" you while you are picking them.  My granddad used to call them bramble berries. They start out with red berries that turn a really dark purple to almost black in the early spring.

 One of my favorite memories as a kid was going berry picking with my granddad.  There was kind of a ritual that we went through every single time we went.  First on the list was changing out of our shorts into long pants. Those dang vines will tear you up if you aren't careful of  the tiny thorns. The next thing we had to do was find a long stick to poke around the vines to make sure there weren't any surprises hiding in there like snakes.  For some reason snakes seem to like dewberries too!

Every time we went picking dewberries my granddad would tell us the same thing. That if we didn't stop eating them off the vine we wouldn't have enough for my grandma to make us a dewberry cobbler.  Of course it was hard for him to fuss at us too much since his lips were just as purple as ours were!!  Those were some good times.

Dewberries make wonderful cobblers and some yummy jelly too.  I've never had dewberry wine but I bet it would be darned good as well.