berry picker question

[baggins]

This year i finally got round to getting a berry picker, been after one for ages, especially since i found a cople of great lingon berry patches.
Any tips on how to separate the berries from the mix of leaves, twips, pine needles and bugs after collecting?
Tried dropping the haul in a bucket of water, hoping to skim the rubbish off the top, but all that happened is everything floated, lol!
Cheers
Baggins

 

[Bionic]

Could you try winnowing your haul?

 

[Janne]

My mom used to place the berry/ rubbish mix on an unfolded newspaper, pick the larger bits out by hand, then blow away the leaves and other light stuff.
Thrn she removed the green unripe berries.

I never helped her as I hated both picking and cleaning berries.
I did help eating them though!

Thr harder lingon berries she poured from her picker into the bucket from a certain height, much of the leaves got separated away akready then.

Does not work with billberries, to soft.

 

[Robson Valley]

This is an old way that I use, Plains Cree indian method.

You need 2 long sticks and an old fuzzy blanket.
You make a tilted Vee-shaped valley with a clean basket at the narrow bottom.

Slowly pour on the berries at the top of the blanket. The good stuff rolls to the bottom.
All the other crap sticks to the blanket.
25 lbs of berries cleaned in minutes.

 

[baggins]

Awsome!!! To be honest, i'm glad Janne started his reply with 'my mom...', i was half expecting a reply in that vein, old ways are still the best. Will try both methods, cheers guys.
Now, next trick is to find an elk haunch in Warwickshire, might be a bit trickier, lol!

 

[SGL70]

I use a grid-type thing to shake som of the undesired stuff out. Then I go over it by hand, to clean it proper.

 

[Robson Valley]

Cleaning berries is a lot of work. I've done a lot of it by hand, too.
Come January when the pie comes out of the oven, not so bad, huh?

I grew up with First Nations culture all around me and I was expected to learn a lot of it for wilderness camping.
The blanket cleaning trick for berries was magic to me as a kid.
We stripped bushes as fast as we could go, over a tarp on the ground.
Speed and sheer bulk quantity were the orders for the day.

Should be 2 elk hearts on my bench by sunset tomorrow!
Make jerky of one and stuff and BBQ smoke roast the other. Wild rice, pecans, some apple, etc.
Smoker gets cleaned up today. Jeez but am I an optimist or what???

 

[baggins]

ooooo, smoked elk heart, delicious!!! All i can hope for over here is deer, nice but elk, moose and caribou beat venison hands down.

 

[Robson Valley]

I didn't get to berry picking this summer and I am disappointed in that.
Our Amelanchier alnifolia (Saskatoon berry) is excellent fresh or cooked any way you can.
If I was back east on the great plains, I'd be after 50 lbs of chockecherries
(Prunus virginiana), for juice, jelly, jam, syrup, even respectable wine.
There's usually so much of those, you just strip bushes until you get bored then do it all again tomorrow.
Maybe mix black currants with apple in pies this winter and pretend.

What have you got for nuts to pick, besides walnuts?
All we have wild is hazel nuts the size of peas and a bazillion prickles.
Mom had a special pair of crude leather gloves, just for that.

I have bought and eaten 6 local 2-yr old bison since 2001. That's real meat when you're looking for a beefy taste..
Astronomically expensive, cut-for-cut. But you buy one or two sides, same as or less than our local beef prices.

 

[Janne]

Nuts?
Hazelnuts and beechnuts wild
Filberts and almond domesticated

Mum and sis did the berry picking, while me and dad hunted mushrooms.

We cooperated on a few berries though. Cloudberry, wild blackberry, wild raspberry.

 

[baggins]

same here, hazel (if you can beat the squirrels) and beechnuts. The Hazel is easy to pick if you can get them, and no prickles.
Berry wise, raspberries (way nicer than the commercial ones), lingon in Scotland and even a few cloud berries in the Cairngorms, juniper and bilberries. plenty of others to, but what i pick and jam up.
I'll quite often pick the berries while my good lady does the shrooms (she knows more than me on that score, but I'm learning) and, as an aside, its been a fantastic season for Ceps and field parasols over here. The Kitchen is so full, i can barely get in. I've even had to jury rig an air drier off the ceiling to start the drying until there is space in the dehydrator.
Alas, down here, game is a bit scarce. i can generally get plenty of pheasant and partridge in return for a days beating, but not much else.

 

[Robson Valley]

4C and rain today, 2" - 4" wet snow tomorrow, down here in the village, no less. Not a berry-picker's delight.
At my old place, I knew where there were a couple of good wild raspberry patches.
Always meant to transplant a bunch of those canes but never did.

If we get a couple of -5C nights, the grape leaves might get frosted off so I can call the pickers.

Are there wild strawberries in the UK? Big as a pea on plants 2" high? THE MOST exotic strawberry taste, ever.

 

[Woody girl]

4C and rain today, 2" - 4" wet snow tomorrow, down here in the village, no less. Not a berry-picker's delight.
At my old place, I knew where there were a couple of good wild raspberry patches.
Always meant to transplant a bunch of those canes but never did.

If we get a couple of -5C nights, the grape leaves might get frosted off so I can call the pickers.

Are there wild strawberries in the UK? Big as a pea on plants 2" high? THE MOST exotic strawberry taste, ever.

Yep we get wild strawberry here in the UK I love them so much I have a huge patch of them in my garden. Each year it gets bigger and bigger . Nothing like wild strawberrys for breakfast.

 

[Toddy]

and they've always got one or two to welcome you too
I have Autumn fruiting raspberries, and they'll still be giving me fruits up until December.

On the berry sorting though, if you shake them gently back and forth on a cover of some kind or other they'll seperate out from the debris enough that what's left can generally be rinsed off. There's a knack to it, but then there's a knack to successful winnowing of most things.