The Bay Area’s wild blackberries are starting to ripen on the vines; as you fly by in a car or on foot you’ll see spots of blue-black amongst the dusty green leaves and thorns. Why would you pay upwards of $10 a pound for mediocre berries at the grocery store when our wild berries are so fabulously sweet?
Kids love to pick blackberries, and many of the best ones grow right at their eye level. Dress them in thick long-sleeved shirts, gloves, and long pants, hang a beach bucket or a plastic yogurt container around their necks with twine, and teach them how to reach around the thorns to pluck the blackest berries. Avoid the tight, hard newly ripe ones to focus on the berries most swollen with juice; these will be the sweetest. Some are so ripe they’ll explode right in your hand; lick the sun-warmed juice off your fingers and experience joy.
There are a million spots to pick: a friend’s back yard, various patches in Golden Gate Park and the Presidio, the hills of Marin and Oakland, around the oceanfront and lakes of San Francisco. Generally wherever you see water in the Bay Area, blackberry vines are nearby. You’ll see vines from your car, of course, but you’ll want to avoid those, steeped in auto exhaust as they are. However, the presence of these vines indicate others that can be found on secret, winding paths off the road. Turn off the car, grab your buckets, and set off on a hunt; kids will delight in being the first to find a juicy patch.
It is legal to pick in Golden Gate Park and anywhere in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (Forts Miley and Mason, for instance, are loaded with berries), but berries are sometimes sprayed with pesticides in parkland. Look out for vines that look browned and withered; do not pick from these vines. That said, I’ve been eating wild blackberries for many years with no ill effects.
A jar of wild San Francisco jam or a blackberry pie makes a terrific hostess gift, if it ever gets that far. More likely you’ll squander what you picked in pancakes or an after-dinner blackberry cobbler. Riding home from a pick, the kids drowsing in the backseat, Tupperware filled with a bounty of berries, visions of pies to come filling your head: this is what happily family memories are made of.