I got an e-mail alert on Friday morning that the black raspberries were ripe for picking at Alstede Farms, so I hoped right in the car and headed over there!
I had never gone berry picking at this particular farm before. I used to go to Bear Creek Farms up in Sussex County, NJ because they had the most wonderful variety of organically grown red, purple, black, and golden raspberries available for pick-your-own, but sadly, they have had to close their operation to the public until 2010 while they renovate their fields, or whatever you call it with farming.
I had to find another place where I might find those black and golden raspberries, so I went online to Pickyourown.org, a site with listings for farmers markets and pick-your-own farms all over the United States. In addition to the listings, there is also information on canning and preserving, recipes for those goodies you bring home, and all kinds of other related information. It's a great resource, and I highly recommend it!
Back to the raspberry picking...So I found Alstede Farms on the pick-your-own site. I checked it out in the Spring when the strawberries were in season, but I must say that I'm not as crazy about strawberries as I am for raspberries, (at least not enough to spend two or three hours hunched over picking them!) so I just bought a quart of them at the store.
The farm is located in a beautiful, semi-rural area of New Jersey, with most of the homes set back pretty far from the road, so you know it's an upscale area. I passed in and out of Somerset county to get there, which is where I was born and raised, and while my home town was not exactly poor, it was a far cry from the horse farms I passed to get to the farmers market!
When you arrive at Alstede Farms, you see that they are definitely working all the angles. In addition to the farmers market and the pick-your-own facilities, they have a petting zoo, an ice cream stand, a food truck that's open on the weekends, a daycamp of some sort, and some other attractions for kids. It felt like I was headed into an amusement park! If I had kids, it would probably be a great place to bring them.
I started out in the store, where I got a map and bought some quart containers, and then headed out to the black rasperries. They had other things ready to pick as well - red rasperries, currants, gooseberries, and blueberries, but all I cared about were the black raspberries.
Black rasperries have a slightly different flavor than the red ones, which I can't really describe, but I personally like them much better than the red ones. We also had them in my yard when I was a child, so it's also a nostalgic thing for me.
You never ever see black rasperries in the stores anywhere, (which leads me to believe that they are probably too delicate to transport and don't hold up well) so I spent two hours out there in the full sun and picked two full quarts.
I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do with them. I froze about half of them, ate some, and now I'm trying to decide if I want to make something with the rest, or just eat them too. I probably won't be able to resist polishing them off!