Elderberries - Harvesting Tips

hi this is Anna at clion Hall Farms today we're going to talk about elderberries we have a lot of Elderberry plants on our property probably close to 100 plus um and this time of year is the start of harvesting we have a couple varieties of elderberries here there's actually two varieties that are popular in North America that's the American Elderberry and the European Elder and there's a lot of subvarieties from that they're Hardy up to Zone 4 um you can probably find a lot of varieties at your local gardening Stores um they're very hearty plants they grow fast it's almost like an instant hedge these Elderberry bushes here are about six years old so you can see how tall they get typically depending on the variety that you purchase they'll grow anywhere from 9 ft to 24 ft tall I think these will be more and about to 15 ft 10 ft to 15 ft height range the elderberries that we have right now we have a couple that are still flowering this is a flower flowers are also edible um there's a lot of great recipes you can find on the internet um to make Elder flour jelly they even make Elder flour wine I believe some people even dredge them in a batter and fry them up think everything tastes great when it's fried um we have some elderberries growing here they're still green so these are not ripe elderberries people might be so over here we have a lot of elderberries that about ready to be Harvest and there are some that I'm going to harvest right now um it's a simple process just cutting the berries but what you want to look for are berries that have a lot of black you want bluish to Black Elder berries those are ready to be harvested and all you do is just snip them now in the early fall what we'll be doing is trimming these bushes back um so that we can control the growth and um trying to keep it at a size that we can easily harvest the berries on the top as you can tell this bush here a plant is pretty tall so I'll need a step ladder for that but we have a quite a few berries in here and some of these berries I mean you can just see the cluster of berries on here this is not ripe yet you can tell that they're pink and red and there's even some green ones on here and what I'm looking for is something that's really dark and black and you want to get them because when they get very ripe they start falling off the uh bunch and here's another one that I'll just clip and then in a little bit I'll show you some of the ways that I use to actually take the Bel berries off the stems when you're cooking with elderberries you want to try to remove as much as possible the stems you don't want to cook or eat or do anything with the leaves or the larger stems I also like using Elderberry plants as um part of my landscaping design in this case I have Black Lace Elderberry as you can tell their black leaves has a nice size to it it's only a year old so this will get much larger it does produce berries that are edible um but they are green and they're not very prolific I would just probably leave the berries on this plant for the birds and the birds do love the Elderberry plants um not as much as our blueberry plants but they will eat some of the elderberries this will get about maybe 6 feet tall and it'll eventually fill this area around our swimming pool um and it's a nice accent plant with the black leaves the Elderberry plants can survive in full sun or up to partial Shades so um they're not picky about the soil you could GR almost anywhere I have this as you can tell in a landscaping area by the swimming pool that gets full sun um I also have one of these plants in my front yard and that gets a lot of shade so after I've cut a bunch of elderberries then it's time now to destem them uh when I first started doing this process I would take an Elderberry Bunch like this and I would would go Berry by Berry very long tedious process I then did some research on a variety of techniques that other people have used to try to streamline this process um one process was to freeze the berries than to take a fork and put them through uh it worked fine uh but what I found is that the berries Tha quickly and then I was left with um some liquid and it was hard trying to freeze those berries as individual berries which I'll explain my freezing method in a moment when elderberries are really ripe you can take a bucket such as this grab a few strands and then just hit them hard and this I find is has worked the best for me so far that I'm able to just destem them quickly the bugs will fall down to the bottom and it just makes the process easier now if I would bang this a little bit longer I'd get a lot more berries however I always still have berries at the end of this process on this bunch and then I would just take them upside down and just start running my fingers through them just to get the rest of them down and I don't do it individually I just try to grab as much as possible and my goal is just to get the berries in the bucket um I've done this process you know where I froze or not froze but I took a bunch of elderberries and I I put them in the refrigerator um to get them chilled and um I don't know if it's the way I feel about it but in my mind I think it's a little bit easier when the berries are a little bit chilled however it works so fine you can see how the berries just come off and if I would bang this more on the side the majority of these berries will fall into this bucket when I have all my berries in the bucket um we just have a few of them in here now I would put a lot of water in here a lot of cold water Stir It Up a little bit it cleanse the berries but then what's nice about it is that a lot of the little stems any of the bugs or insects uh and unripe berries will float to the top I then Ed just a little mesh tool strainer and then I'll just scoop the berries out and put them in another bucket and I'll feed them to the chickens um and the process has worked great for me much better than P picking off the individual berries um I can usually feel this bucket probably up to here a quarter full within 30 minutes um the other way I was doing it it would literally take me all day so this is a technique that after a few years of trying different methods to make this process easier this by far is my favorite way of destemming the berries I have a number of berries in my bucket um I like to freeze them and the easiest way I found after I have the water in here and I strain them is that I'll put the wet berries on a baking sheet with covered with paper towels and I'll let them dry it takes a couple hours just to get as much moisture off as possible and at the same time I can pick through the berries to pull out anyone's that I don't want to freeze or if I do see any stems or any insects remaining after my rats after they're um somewhat dry then I take a larger baking sheet and I freeze them and I usually keep it in my freezer overnight and then I have a larger container that I store in the freezer that then I put the frozen berries in this allows me to pull out the berries as I need them for recipes without having one big frozen mass of berries so if I need seven cups for making Jam then I can take out seven cups of individual berries to make my jam and leave the remaining berries in the freezer now my ELD berries what I use them for is to make an Elixir it makes a great antioxidant immune booster um drink that we take in the winter time we usually take an ounce per day and in the winter I'll put the recipe on our blog I also make wine I need 4 lbs of berries just to make one gallon of wine and I plan on making 10 gallons of wine this winter that'll equate to about 60 bottles of wine and I like to make jams and jellies so I do use a lot of elderberries um I don't eat them plain I don't put them in my smoothies they're very tart bitter I don't like them plain but I do like them cooked I do like them in wine and I do like them as our in our elixir

Channel: Clifton Hall Farms

Views: 53,798

Keywords: elderberries, harvesting elderberries, organic farming, berries for making wine

Id: 23bPNCRVTTc

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 02 2017