Foraging Blackberries and Sloes on Autumn Hedgerows

The Sweetest Harvest of the Year

There is a moment in early September when the hedgerows finally give in. The elderberries have gone over, the hazels are fattening, and the brambles — after weeks of hard green and stubborn red — hang heavy and black in the warm afternoon light. For anyone who keeps a cottage garden, an allotment or simply a fondness for the old ways, this is the season that pays you back for months of weeding. A couple of hours along a country lane can fill a basket with blackberries for a pie and enough sloes to set a bottle of gin going for Christmas.

It costs nothing, it gets you out in the last of the sunshine, and it is one of the few genuinely useful skills that has been passed down without anyone ever writing it into a manual. Here is how to do it properly.

Finding Ripe Blackberries

A ripe blackberry is black all over, with a soft, slightly dull bloom rather than a hard shine. It should come away from the core with the gentlest of tugs — if you have to pull, it is not ready. The individual little drupelets should be plump and even; if they look shrivelled or the fruit is collapsing into mush, leave it and move on.

Look up. The best fruit on any bramble patch is nearly always the highest, ripened by sun rather than shaded by the leaf. A hooked stick — a shepherd's crook or an old walking stick with a bit of bent wire taped to the top — will pull a high branch down without you having to wade into the thorns. Wear long sleeves, take a pair of gardening gloves, and be prepared to lose a little blood to the cause; it is part of the ritual.

• Best time: late August through to mid-October, depending on where you are in the country.
• Avoid: fruit growing at exhaust-pipe height on a busy road, and anything on a verge that looks suspiciously weed-free — councils do spray.
• Pick into: a shallow tub or basket, not a deep bag, so the fruit does not crush under its own weight.

Sloes, and the Art of Patience

Sloes are the fruit of the blackthorn, and they are a different proposition altogether. They look like small, dusty blue-black damsons with a heavy powdery bloom, and they grow on thorny twiggy bushes that are often found at the far end of a blackberry run. Squeeze one and it is taut; bite one and it will turn your mouth inside out. That astringency is the point — it is what makes sloe gin taste like something worth waiting for.

The old advice is to wait for the first frost, which softens the skins and sweetens the fruit slightly. In practice, frosts are unreliable these days, and a sloe picked in late September and frozen overnight at home does exactly the same job. Picking from mid-September to early November is fine; the flavour deepens as the season goes on.

• Identify carefully: sloes have a short stalk and a single stone inside, unlike the larger, stalkless damsons.
• Check the bush: blackthorn has long, sharp thorns along the twigs — if it has no thorns, it is not blackthorn.
• Freeze before using: a night in the freezer splits the skins and saves you pricking each one with a needle.

Pick Above Dog Height

This is the rule that every old forager will give you, and it is worth taking literally. Anything below roughly waist height along a well-walked footpath is fair game for dogs, and you do not want it in your pudding. It is not snobbery — it is basic hygiene, and it is why the fruit at the top of the hedge, out of reach of both dogs and casual pickers, is nearly always the cleanest and best.

It also means you are leaving the low-hanging fruit for the people and creatures who need it most. Which brings us to the second rule.

Leave Plenty Behind

Hedgerows are not a shop. They are a larder shared with blackbirds, song thrushes, redwings, fieldfares, mice, voles and the occasional lucky dormouse, and autumn fruit is what carries them through the winter. The old guidance is to take no more than a third of what you find on any one bush, and to leave the berries at the top and the ones on the outer edges of a clump.

• Never strip a bush bare — move on and spread your picking across several patches instead.
• Never pull up plants, break branches or cut hedges — sloes and blackberries come back next year on old wood.
• On private land, ask first. On a public footpath, picking fruit for your own use is generally fine; digging up a plant is not.
• Check the rules before picking in a nature reserve or a site of special scientific interest, where foraging is often restricted.

From Basket to Kitchen

Get the fruit home and deal with it the same day. Blackberries need little more than a rinse and a check for grubs — soak them briefly in salted water if you are squeamish, then drain and dry on a tea towel. They freeze beautifully in a single layer on a tray, then bagged up, and a crumble made in January from September blackberries is a fine thing indeed.

For sloe gin, the reliable proportions are 500g sloes, 250g sugar and 1 litre of gin in a large sterilised jar. Prick or freeze the sloes, add everything together, seal, and turn the jar gently every day for the first week, then weekly for three months. Strain through muslin, bottle, and leave until at least the following autumn if you can bear to. It improves for years.

And if you have a surplus of blackberries beyond the pies, they make a superb hedgerow jelly with a few crab apples for pectin — the colour of a stained-glass window and the taste of a proper English autumn.