Púca slime and blackberry picking

Suddenly it happened that an unexpected warmth descended on our small patch.

Having been bemoaning the fact that there were so few insects and butterflies all through the summer, in the last week or two they have arrived in abundance. 

It’s strange because it’s also early autumn when foliage is turning to gold and along with apples and blackberries, there are still so many summer flowers and herbs thriving.

Swallows are gathering and many have already left. 

This year the house martins came back to last year's nest and another one was built nearby. 

These adults raised a couple of broods in each nest and as we speak they are still flying around practicing for their long journey back to Africa. Very soon they will leave and hopefully return again next summer.

We were so thrilled that eventually after a few years of sporadic nesting, their spot was claimed and their families survived.

It was very hard the first year when magpies invaded the nests and destroyed them. 

They are so beautifully crafted from small mud bricks which build up a curved home under the eaves. 

Now these nests seem solid and besides a few small repairs they last from year to year.

Another sign of autumn is that we now have the pleasure of a few juicy blackberries with breakfast. 

You have to develop the great knack of picking only the best! If you remember picking blackberries for bramble jelly or jam, it was allowed to pick everything and anything. 

But if you are going to eat them immediately they have to be clean, ripe, juicy and at their best. For me the early morning when they are still dewey and yet being warmed by the sun is the best time.

If you allow the blessed brambles to grow then you will be guaranteed a nice crop every year.

But most people don’t want them and having had a few encounters between my legs and the said brambles, I understand that.

I’ve made a compromise with the yokes and they are allowed to grow as long as they stay put in a few designated areas!

When picking be careful of leaning in too far! It’s a disaster when you lose your balance. 

Thorns, nettles, who knows what will take a toll on any forager. Long trousers are essential as thistles lurk and seem to jump up and attack without warning.

Blackberries are perfect at the moment and now is the time to pick them. 

There are a few professional foragers around these days so if you are lucky you will know a spot away from the crowds. 

Food writer Russ Parsons who lives in Waterford recently posted about auld lads telling him yarns about their exploits blackberry picking. We all have those memories.

Mine are about wrecking my lovely summer dress by filling two pockets with blackberries while out wandering the lanes with the other kids.

 We must have walked for miles and in those days of course as long as you turned up for meals not an eye was batted at your absence. 

The purple stained dress didn’t go down too well at home, but it may have led to my love of that colour and my years of clothes dyeing and fabric printing.

Years later on a short cut across the lanes of Dublin, it was well known that you would find rats munching on the blackberries there. 

It was a horrible “running of the gauntlet” between the bushes on that lane, waiting for the rustling sound of the rats diving back to wherever they sprang from.

 I could never touch any of the fruit there, Now my worries about hedgerow blackberry picking is how do the children of today know the places that have been sprayed with chemicals, pesticides and Roundup? How would you know? Well you wouldn’t so be careful when eating on the hoof. Most fruit should be taken home and washed thoroughly.

One of my romantic notions is to think about our ancestors wandering these lanes. 

Blackberry picking has existed for 8,000 years according to archaeological evidence. 

There is all sorts of lore about their presence.

The thorns evoke christian images and the juices apparently were thought of as blood like and therefore curative. 

There’s hardly anything growing in the ditches that our ancestors didn’t harvest as medicine.

The Journal of the Louth Archaeological Society, 1915 recalls local folklore: “Nice ripe blackberries are sweet and palatable; but hungry boys and girls will eat blackberries that are neither sweet or palatable. 

"However after ‘Oidhche Shamhna’ or Hallow Eve no blackberries are eaten. And why? Because on that night the púca goes abroad and crawls over the blackberries covering them with an invisible slime, and where is the boy or girl who would eat a berry soiled with the púca’s slime.

"The fact seems to be that blackberries after that date are stale and unwholesome. But the púca’s slime is the great deterrent.” 

The púca is also said to befoul blackberries at Michaelmas, 29 September, so beware and do not eat them or you might fall under a spell. 

We are blessed to have this time of fruiting after the flowering, enjoy your apples and your blackberries, the golden light of autumn, and keep an eye out for púca slime!