Wineberries

How is it that here in West Virginia, with snow still on the ground, we’re in our shirtsleeves and searching for berries?  The brambly thicket behind the greenhouse has needed attention since last autumn when the biomass had diminished enough to see what was really growing in there.  To be honest, it has needed attention since last spring, when it seemed that one day everything was just starting to green up and the next it was burgeoning into a verdant mass worthy of a painting by Jean Jacques Rousseau.  But today, a rare winter day of blue skies and mild breezes, is really the perfect day to find the wineberries.

On our place and the surrounding acres there are several patches of bramble fruits - black raspberries, blackberries and wineberries.  They stretch along old fence lines and tumbled fieldstone walls, and spread into the dappled light under medium growth hackberries, poplars, black walnuts and pignuts (a sort of hickory).  Most are out in the far fields, away from the activities near house and barn, and so are frequented by all the wild berry pickers.  Deer and raccoons, rabbits and possums, field mice and all the wild birds from titmouse to crow, love the berry buffet.

But the thicket we are tackling grew up around a section of old board fence, the boundary between the farm buildings and an area of open woodland known as ‘the chicken woods.’  It has been protected a bit by its proximity to buildings busy with humans, barn cats and farm dogs.  In berry season it is shaded during the hottest part of the day, and after a rain it catches a bit of additional runoff from nearby roofs.  It is the perfect spot for a wineberry patch.  

  

We wade into the tangle with loppers and saw, removing ancient gnarled grapevines and wiry greenbrier.  Most of the multiflora rose (a rampant invasive species around here) is ousted, though we leave a few selected canes to grow and bloom and perfume the first warm nights of summer.  What we are most carefully avoiding are the fiercely bristling red canes of the wineberries.  Their arches are long, eight or nine feet, and covered in insidiously fine thorns. Though we are in our shirtsleeves, we are also outfitted with thick leather gloves. We probably should be wearing face protectors too.

Like other brambles, wineberries are perennials, with new fruit coming on last year’s canes.  The problem is, we didn’t tackle the thicket last year to cut back the canes that had finished fruiting.  So we have to leave as many as we can if we hope to see fruit this summer.  We’re trying to make up for our year of neglect, clearing away the strangling vines and the competition of the small maple and locust trees  that have  already made some headway under the shelter of the thicket.  On this unwintry day we’re braving the thicket and thorns. We’re trying to give this special patch every advantage, so come June there will be wineberries for cobblers and tarts, wineberries for sauces and jams, and wineberries to eat by the handful standing in the summer sun.    

             

Image thanks to Somers Pioneer History