Blackberry Picking

I love all the summer fruits and I have loved living in South Carolina so far because quite frankly SC seems to be a lot of nothing.  And by a lot of nothing I mean a lot of land.  And where there is a lot of land there are farms.  And where there are farms there is a lot of local produce.  Jackpot. One farm in the area that I like is Bush-N-Vine.  The farm is about 25 minutes away but they have a produce stand just down the street.  We drove out there last week with my parents to pick blackberries. Out of all the berries, blackberries are probably my favorite.  It might because they tend to be the most expensive, so they really are a special treat.   

The farm itself was pretty impressive and the blackberry bushes left nothing to be desired.

Phoebe got the hang of it pretty quickly and knew to pick the ripe, black ones.  Although she did well picking them off the bush, she found it much more effective to pick blackberries out of grandpa's bucket to fill her own...

Believe it or not she also ate some blackberries!  She has never eatten them when we've given them to her at home.  But after picking for 15 or 20 minutes and watching us eat them, I saw her put one in her mouth.  And to my surprise it didn't come back out.  In fact she ended up eating quite few.  But of course she has refused to eat another one since we've brought them home.  I am convinced that although she truely is picky, her refusal to eat and stubbornness  regarding food is a complete behavioral power-play; it drives me crazy.

So now we have more blackberries than I know what to do with.  I've made blackberry cobbler and blackberry peach cobbler and will probably make one more cobbler before they're all gone.  Yum!