Unwelcome Harvest

I went elderberry-picking on Friday, having noticed some on my way home the previous weekend. I got fairly thoroughly nettle-stung around the ankles despite the fact that the path had been recently strimmed back (if not for one bow-shot on either side, than at least for six feet), but the harvest was disappointing; a lot of the berries had already gone over, and were withered on the bough or else had been picked off/knocked off already by birds, and the remaining sprays had a significant proportion of unripe fruit.

The worse the quality of the berry sprays, the slower it is to strip them off, since you can't just draw a fork down the whole thing in order to scrape free the ripe fruit, but have to cherry-pick the good berries while avoiding the unripe ones (and in particular the over-ripe and shrivelled ones). I got two smallish bags full, and spent Friday evening cleaning the fruit from the first batch. I ended up with about enough elderberries to fill a pie-dish.


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