Wild Raspberries

 
So, this is our first summer at Grandma Stella's Homestead.  Last fall we had seen several wild blackberry plants on the property -- but last weekend we were greeted to quite the surprise.  As we were walking around our fields, we noticed several huge patches of bright red berries -- upon further inspection, they were wild raspberries.

 

So, we dedicated a good amount of time picking raspberries. We had quite the large bounty (below), so we froze some for later use, made several jars of Raspberry Jam, made smoothies, a tasty berry cobbler (we ate that for breakfast with yogurt a couple of mornings), put them over ice cream and ate them plain.

It was awesome.

Apparently there are wild raspberries growing along roads and fence lines throughout Arkansas -- they're a tasty and healthy treat and an exciting find for us at the Homestead. Yum. 

Our bounty:

 

 

Comments

[Angie]

I found some berries the other day along a dirt road. I thought they looked like raspberries, but I wasn't sure, due to the large number of tiny thorns along the branches. I thought raspberry plants looked like blackberry plants in that respect, so I didn't pick any of the berries along the road. It's hard for me to see in the photos above if the branches have tiny thorns all along them and are what I found the other day. Do raspberries have more thorns than blackberries?

[Brent]

So, technically these aren't "raspberries", they're "wineberries". They taste a bit like a tart raspberry though. The branches do have a lot of small thorns, but they are less "grabby" than Blackberry bushes and my hands/arms aren't as cut up after picking them. These are probably what you saw if it was about a week ago, which would have been prime season this year.