(bright music) (upbeat music) - One of my absolute favorite summertime joy and delights is harvesting black caps or wild black raspberries.

I have never used the plant medicinally.

People do use the leaves.

I of course go for the berries.

There's just nothing like it.

Like, when you're harvesting them, I eat as many as I harvest and you get just this great burst of fruity juiciness.

If you've never harvested black raspberries before, my advice would be find a ripe one, close your eyes, and just savor that moment.

Some ID’ing characteristics, this is like a, a offshoot or a younger one.

So here's a stem.

It's got like the little thorns on there.

Easily identifiable characteristic is the leaves.

Usually three, can have up to five, and they all connect to the stem.

There's a word for it that of course I cannot pronounce, but the easiest way to say, it's kind of like the fingers on our hand.

Also, the underside of the leaves has, like, a whiter shade to it.

That's also another telltale sig that you're on to black raspberries.

(gentle music) Usually they start ripening anywhere, depending on weather, of course, but the third or fourth week of June, in my experience, that's a little early, but that did start happening this year.

Typically, I've seen maybe the second week of July where they're really becoming ripe.

So like commercial raspberries, they're bigger than this, but they're about this color when they're considered ripe.

A black raspberry or black cap turns black.

And so berries are just a super fun way to make some really delicious desserts.

You can make marinades for meats, a variety of sauces, you can make jam.

The easiest thing is if you have like one cup of wild black raspberries, add one cup cane sugar and a little dab of like half and half and just mash it up and pour it over some dessert cake, like angel food cake.

It's just an easy, simple way to enjoy it.

And also just something that I really enjoy.

You can make barbecue sauces and that's kind of fun as well.

So the wild black raspberry.

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