Learn How to Identify and Harvest Elderberries!

these guys are just about ready to pick I think these guys are actually ready that's what we're looking for good evening guys Jordan here with the Nutty Nom Homestead it is it is mid August 2023 and as you guys can see our elderberries are ready to pick we uh we grow three different varieties of elderberries here on our farm we make wine jelly jam Elderberry gummies uh Elderberry syrup we do a lot with the elderberries elderberries are really good for boosting the immune system especially this time of year with the kiddos going back to school they're going to be bringing home everything getting everybody sick so we're going to go ahead and pick some of these elderberries and we'll uh we'll show you how we go ahead and process them and make Elderberry syrup Elderberry gummies a bus list of Elderberry wine so y'all stay with us so what you're looking for with the elderberries is you're looking for the majority of the the berries to be a dark purple or almost a black color as you can see on this cluster here it's about 50 50 where we got some that are light purple and some that are dark purple I'll actually leave this cluster for a couple more days you can even see some of the green berries in there you don't want that this could taint an entire batch we don't want to deal with that like I said a couple more days isn't going to hurt us however if you look a little deeper into this patch those guys are ready to go [Music] that batch is all dark purple that's a thing of beauty guys this is natural medicine they've been using it for centuries and it grows in your backyard all we're going to do is we're going to pick it and then we're going to stick it in the freezer overnight and then tomorrow we'll come out here and we'll shake all these berries off and then we'll go ahead and process them okay guys so as you can see we have these dark black elderberries right here these are the native elderberries I do have two different varieties here on the farm we are going to go ahead and start collecting these and we're going to make a tincture with these today I believe but I'm also going to uh process some into a syrup and also I think I'm gonna make some wine as well so this is really simple all you do clip them off and put them in a bucket we will take this bucket we'll put it in the freezer overnight once these berries are frozen they pop right off of these stems and it's really easy to separate the berry from the stem all right so what we have here is an unripe close to ripe but unripe head of uh black elderberries as you can see there's a couple of green ones these are kind of a mob purple color they're not quite a real dark purple or a black let me turn you guys up so this is a really good example of a head of elderberries that should be left to ripen up for a couple more days we're pretty fortunate that this variety the heads hang down so we don't have too many of the birds come in here and get them as you guys can see these heads just hang upside down so the birds have a real difficult time getting to them this head right here as you can see is almost all black dark purple or black this is a good head it's real heavy you can feel it hanging on here here's another one they're real dark these are the good berries that we're going to be picking today so I'm doing this one-handed guys I'm going to come through here and then right into our pot okay guys so I've got my stockpot just about full I've already filled up one of these the other day when we had some ripe so we're not getting as many elderberries this year as we did last year I think the drought had a lot to do with that we did lose quite a few of our elderberries but I do want to show you guys uh the little bit identification between Elderberry and one of the common look-alikes as you guys can see this Leaf here this is a common elderberry uh sambuca's kind of dances found across North America and these guys are just about any kind of uh Disturbed fence row field Edge driveway cut you guys can find these just about anywhere there's some sort of disturbance in the soil where you're not going to get a lot of trees growing up what we have here is a lookalike well it doesn't really look like it to me but this is the common poke weed as you guys can see look at the berry clusters these grow and two totally different forms elderberries that grow in a form that hang upside down the berry clusters on poke they grow on just one leaf or one stem down and they alternate the berries all the way down there's one that's immature they do grow in the same areas as you guys can see these are grown right beside each other the Elderberry has kind of this quirky wood on it and the the leaves are alternating opposite of each other all the way up and down the stem if you look over here at the poke it has this kind of green grassy type stock and whenever you break it it kind of has this green vegetated look all the way through it when you break Elderberry it doesn't quite look like that in my opinion anyway so we want to make sure that we don't get these poke is useful for some things but we're not going to get into that today so we just come through here and we break it down as we see it I don't want to competing for light and resources so that's all there is to it folks I'm going to go over here and collect some more berries okay guys we're over at another part of our property that has some more elderberries on it and here is a good example of what pokeberries look like versus elderberries I've got the elderberries growing right here in the back and I literally have a string of pokeberries growing right here beside it they kind of have the same black Sheen to it but they grow in completely different forms there should not be any mixing them up this is poke right here this is elderberry this is mature poke berries right here so you guys can familiarize them yourself there's some more so this is one of those things where if you're going to go out and Forge you should definitely know what you're foraging for this is mature and some immature and totally unripe pokeberries we're not going to be using these today like I said they do have some uses you can use the the Poke root for sure but this is not what we're after those elderberries are what we're after today guys so as you guys can see we have a stockpot full of freshly picked black elderberries here I'm going to go ahead and put these guys in the freezer overnight that's going to kill off any bugs that are on them and it's going to make these berries pop off of these stems really easy you guys can put these in a brown paper bag put them in there I just have a five gallon bucket in the freezer stick it in there shake them out the next day that's pretty good so I'll bring you guys back for some of that okay so I put those elderberries and a grocery sack put them in the freezer uh at least four hours overnight's better if you can and as you guys can see just by shaking the bag a little bit most all of these berries have already came off and we're in the process uh filling up our Bucket over here for today's purposes and all these are black what you're seeing here is the the frost on them from from being in the freezer so we are going to go ahead and get these guys shaking off separated and put in the put in our pot here we're going to take you guys inside and we're gonna make something with them well that's all there is to uh collecting and picking black elderberries it's really not that difficult you guys can get out there and pick them this time of year we're in zone 6B I got probably about two more weeks of berry picking to do uh if you guys have any questions or comments please feel free to shoot me a message down below or contact us over on 99 Homestead on Facebook I'd really appreciate it if you guys like share and subscribe so until next time guys get out there and collect your elderberries I'll be showing you guys here real soon how to make Elderberry syrup Elderberry wine and Elderberry gummies

Channel: Nutty Gnome Homestead

Views: 3,081

Keywords: elderberry syrup, elderberry syrup benefits, elderberry syrup recipe, identify elderberry, elderberry, elderberry tincture, elderberry benefits, elderberry harvest, how to harvest elderberry fruit, how to identify elderberries, how to harvest elderberries, how to harvest elderberry berries, wild edibles, how to lose weight fast, edible plants in the wild

Id: 0mHeJF7WCjE

Length: 10min 6sec (606 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2023