Periscope: We should revive the lost pastime of fruit picking to reduce our food waste
Fruit At Cork Pickers Co Farm In Rathcooney Fruit In 1956
The grey days are coming; the light falls with the earlier hours; the red sunsets are few and far between.
“New Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods.” The sere, the yellow leaf loosened by the breezy breath of chilly October, wafts down to the sad sodden earth where late was lifted the store of golden grain that is often so much less than its promise, so much less than our hope.
Over the harvest fields, almost forsaken, falls the paling sunlight, that tells us of summer’s glory gone; the green grass beneath our feet is wet with the moisture of the mists that cling about the low bent trees, and a sad silence is coming in the woods, where music is full-throated no more, and the black cap, the siskin, the linnet and other tiny feathered songsters lilt a faint farewell.
Summer, while the little dormouse looks to its winter nest, and the stealthy stoat burrows a fresh depth in the old dry wall where it has made its home.
The brooding spirit of the Fall, the season of the year’s decay, is weaving its spell over flood and field, wood and hedgerow, and as you trudge the green by-ways where all the air is still redolent with the rich odour of the heather and the bracken, it touches you too with a sad lamenting for the vanished brightness of vernal days; and the words of the old song stray into your mind. “When the roses fade and die, When the swallows homeward fly.”
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And you wonder why those quick-darting feathered visitors left us so early this year, why they departed so untimely for their warm quarters in Egypt. It may be that the world of men, radiating troublous unrest in the hell-born struggle of evil against evil, and with evil against good, has engendered an atmosphere that scores even the birds of the air. God knows! There may be a special providence in the passing of a swallow.
In your meandering you pass gardens and orchards where once in season the trees were bowed with a rosy load of still ripening fruit. With a shrug of a shoulder you note that they have been stripped bare; the fruit plucked prematurely to save it from being plucked dishonestly. You heave a sigh in passing for those unripe apples.
You are not very sorry for “Mere de menage” (‘tis no great thing) nor the thick-clustering “Grenadier” nor the bountiful “Bramley”; but you knew “Annie Elizabeth” was not ready, and you knew also that those Coxes could have gone on ripening for another month and been all the better for it.
Ah well — you know that even unripe apples are better than no apples at all when it comes to counting the gains. And from that reflection arises others, with a question: Why should anyone steal fruit, why play upon that unfashionable and unpopular of al things, the Seventh Commandment, when good fruit is to be had for nothing?
It lies all around you as you walk — rich, ripe, sweet juicy fruit: “Large, luscious berries of sanguine dye,” waiting for the plucking, yet unplucked.
The sweet tuneful bells of memory ring you once again the rare music of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Aurora Leigh” that erstwhile was long your heart’s delight:
Only he who sees enters the temple to thank God for his bounty.
As I walk, I see all around me a wealth of this tiny fruit ripening to decay. Apparently, no one cares. The great gift is wasted; it is neglected. The bramble brakes are black with fully ripe berries — and there they remain, a great store of good food lost totally.
I confess I cannot understand it. In all other countries the blackberry crop is as well recognized as sedulously harvested as any other. It is a fine wholesome berry, making wholesome and delicious jam and a store of it, costing only the price of the sugar, would save the housekeeper with a large family many pounds in a year.
There is no more popular pastime in England than blackberrying. Everyone indulges in it, gentle and simple, because it is pleasant profitable. Women and children, whole families, spend a pleasant day in the country and come home with baskets upon baskets of fine ripe berries which will give them a supply of bramble jelly and blackberry jam for months afterwards.
In Scotland the blackberries, usually called the bramble berry, flourishes exceedingly. There is also in Scotland a berry of the same class known as the black crowberry. This is a small health-like shrub very common on the mountainous heaths of Scotland.
Early in the season it bears purplish flowers and the fruit, which ripen later, are a glossy brownish-black. They are not very nice to eat. The Clan McLean wear the crowberry as their badge. Among the mountains of the north there is a plant growing berries. It grows on peaty soil and is about six inches high. The fruit is of the bramble species, first scarlet, then when ripe of a rich orange colour. It is pleasingly acid.
Coming back to our own common or bramble blackberry, it is such a splendid food stuff it is a thousand pities that it should be let go waste as it is here in Ireland. The matter should be tackled systematically every season.
Every school should have its “Blackberry Day” and the battalions of little gatherers should return to their homes with a load of luscious berries. To the housekeeper who says “I never made blackberry jam” I would say “never” is a word which should not be applied to anything so virtuous and useful as jam making.
Perhaps you do not know how? Well, here is the simplest of simple recipes for some blackberry preserves. Apart from those you might make a blackberry pudding just as you make a blackcurrant pudding with good suet paste in a basin but please remember that very little sugar will be required if the berries are fully ripe.
Ripe firm berries should be chosen. Pick them over very carefully and put them into the preserving pan with half a pound of brown sugar to every pound of fruit.
Boil gently for nearly an hour, stirring and skimming well all the time. When cooked put into pot and tie down when cold.
Apple may be combined with the blackberry but it must be cooked first and then mixed with the boiling fruit. Simple enough, isn’t it?
Many persons object to blackberry jam because of the hard seeds which get into the teeth. Blackberry jelly preserves the full flavour. Here is the newest recipe — choose large crisp red unripe berries. Wash the fruit and place in the preserving pan.
Cover barely with water and boil gently until all the juice is extracted. Then put into a jollybag and let it run all night, and to each pint of liquid add a pound of sugar.
Boil in a preserving pan for nearly an hour or until it jellies when a little is put on a cold plate, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Take the skim off as it rises.
Take equal quantities of blackberries and apples. Peel the apples, cover and stew them until quite one. Then add the blackberries, mix them with the apples for a few minutes and let them boil for five minutes.
Pass them through a sieve on to a large dish, a little at a time. Add three quarters of a pound of sugar to a pound of fruit and boil quickly for 30 minutes. Skim well and put into pots or jars.
It is sad to find so many women ignorant of the methods of dealing with this delicious fruit; it is still sadder to find a number of women who regard cooking as something beneath them.
Cookery is a science and a fine art and it teaches us to use in the best manner all that is comprised in the word “Food”. Through ignorance vast quantities of good food material goes waste annually in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and experience teaches that of the four Ireland is, in this respect, the worst sinner.
The one thing women ought to know, of all others is the right sort of food to eat, and the one thing the women should be taught, before anything else, is the right way to deal with that food, so as to make it appetizing, palatable and nutritious.
It is not a rash conclusion to come to that given equal members there are more underfed youths in Ireland than in any other European country. The remedy for that state of things should be a better knowledge of food value and cookery processes in all schools, more especially in the domestic economy designed specifically for women.