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| Early in the season flowers, unripe, and ripe fruit are all present |
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| Unripe berries don't have any bloom and have green stems |
Over the last several years I have become
more and more amazed at just how prolific Blue Elderberries (Sambucus cerulea) can be. A couple years
ago I picked 4 gallons of fruit in 13 minutes. Last week, on our way back from
the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival, Katrina and I outdid that record. We stopped
just west of Wenatchee in apple orchard country and found the Elderberries
loaded with fruit that was just starting to ripen. Blue Elderberries develop a
whitish bloom on the berries when they are ready to harvest. This bloom is
technically called epicuticular wax and protects the berries from UV radiation,
desiccation, and excessive moisture. Many fruits that persist on the bush for
several months have significant bloom.
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| Katrina with a 2 pound cluster! |
Some of the bushes that we harvested were
up to 10 inches in diameter and 30 feet tall, making it impossible to reach the
massive clusters of fruit near the top. I think the Elderberries in this region
are especially productive because they benefit from the apple orchard
irrigation- their roots probably reach down to a more accessible water
table surrounding the irrigation canals. With three bags already full, we got
permission to harvest several bushes that were next to a migrant workers'
irrigated kitchen garden, and the berry clusters on those bushes were immense- some
weighing at least 2 pounds and measuring close to a foot across. All told, we filled
5 large cloth grocery bags with fruit (about 20 gallons) in less than an hour.
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| Removing the stems |
Back home, we put the fruit in the
freezer for a few days to sweeten it and make the fruit less burdensome to
process. I actually think that wetting the fruit slightly before freezing it
would make it even easier to de-stem. Rolling the berry clusters between our
hands quickly detached the fruit from the myriad of small stems, which should
not be eaten. The leaves, bark, and stems of all elderberry species are
poisonous.
At this stage, the berries can be frozen,
dried for later use, or processed immediately into juice, jelly, wine, etc. We
dried some, and juiced the rest by putting several inches of water in a large
pot and simmered the berries until they softened. We then strained the
juice out and canned it. Katrina also started a small batch of Blue Elderberry
wine.
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| Blue Elderberries from start to finish including canned juice, berry pulp, wine, and dried berries. |
It is now only the beginning of the Blue
Elderberry season (and perhaps even a little early for bushes west of the
Cascades). In the next 2 months we look forward to canning many gallons of
Elderberry juice for drinking straight and mixing with our smoothies throughout
the rest of the year. Elderberry juice has a flavor that is a cross between
grape juice and tomato or cranberry juice with a smell that is similar to grapes. Last year we picked Elderberries through the middle
of October. On years that the birds don’t eat all the fruit, they may be fine
to pick into the early winter.
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| Pyramid shaped flowers of Red Elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) |
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| Heavy cluster of Black Elderberry (Sambucus nigra) fruit |
There are a couple other Elderberry
species in the Pacific Northwest. Red Elderberries (Sambucus racemosa) are much more common west of the Cascades than
Blue Elderberries, but the fruit is far inferior (in fact, from a food
standpoint, I haven't yet figured out how to use it). Native
Americans diluted their tastier berries with Red Elderberries when they were
going to trade them, but reserved their pure berry cakes for personal use. I
have had decent tasting fritters made from Red Elderberry flowers- but what
battered and fried plant doesn’t taste good? Red Elderberries produce fruit mid-summer
and are mostly done fruiting now. Black Elderberries (Sambucus nigra) are mostly found east of the Rockies but are
occasionally found in the Cascades. I got to harvest Black Elderberries last
week with Sam and found their flavor to be intermediate between Blue and Red
Elderberries, but more similar to Blue in flavor and appearance- having palatable
berries and flat clusters of fruit.
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