Eat Those Blackberries

Eating blackberries as many health benefits

Now's the season for blackberries, and if you see big ones that you can easily pick, please do.

Pick as many as you want and you'll be doing your part to prevent blackberry bushes from proliferating.

That's because the Himalayan blackberry, also known as the Armenian blackberry is an invasive plant that has its origins in Armenia and Iran.

However, these blackberries were brought over to North America in the late 1800s and have taken over natural environments, creating thorny thickets that reduce biodiversity, including wildlife movement.

In Pacific Spirit Park along Powerline Trail, a giant patch of blackberry bushes were removed with heavy machinery over a year ago, though there are still blackberry bushes lining the outside of the park.

Rachel Tancock, known as The Nature Educator in Instagram, says the best way for people to prevent new blackberry plants from growing is to eat the berries! Each blackberry has seeds inside so eat up!

They are also packed with vitamin C which helps boost immunity and vitamin K beneficial for blood clotting and bone health, high in fibre, and manganese for bone development and manage blood sugar levels.

Eating Local at Farmer's Market

Blueberries, raspberries and blackberries on sale today

This afternoon I checked out the farmer's market at Riley Park, next to Nat Bailey Stadium where the Vancouver Canadians play baseball. I hadn't been to this farmer's market for decades and was keen to see what the different stalls had.

I managed to get a parking spot in the community centre connected to Hillcrest Park, where there is a library, swimming pool, ice rink and playground.

My lunch of two samosas with chickpea sauce

A short walk away I could see small tents and many of them were selling berries -- strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackberries and even boysenberries. Others sold vegetables like corn, kale, zucchini, English peas, beets, and potatoes. 

Others sold breads, donuts, and cookies, or perogies, meat pies, frozen salmon fillets, and fresh pasta. One had a slow day selling mushrooms -- the guy wore a T-shirt with a large mushroom on it and it said "funguy". He was offering lion mane mushrooms, oyster and shiitake, and even sea asparagus or salicornia, a crunchy but salty vegetable that looks like a mini asparagus.

There were also exotic foods like Balinese sauces, Cambodian seasonings, Indian chilli sauces. 

I ordered lunch from an Indian food truck: a dish called samosa chaat, featuring two samosas with a chickpea sauce drizzled on top with a bit of tamarind chilli sauce. It was delicious with a bit of pickled cabbage.

Vegan chocolate ice cream bar!

And hankering for an ice cream I had a vegan cookies and cream ice cream bar. It was covered in white chocolate shell and underneath was a black ice cream bar, as if you had crushed the black cookies of an Oreo and froze them with a bit of plant-based milk. 

I enjoyed the food while listening to a group of singers performing songs a cappella.

While the prices are a bit more expensive than supermarkets, many people come here for organic produce or want to support local farmers. There's a warm community atmosphere here!

Spotting Black Bears in the Ketchikan Rainforest

Looking up at the many trees in the rainforest

This morning we arrived in Ketchikan, Alaska, the last port of call on our cruise. It's known as the salmon capital of the world because five species of salmon can be found here: chum, sockeye, king, silver and pink. Apparently chum is nicknamed "dog salmon" because it's only good for mushing dogs to eat.

And we are one month away from the start of the salmon run, where the fish return to their birthplace to spawn and then sadly die... 

Black vertical bear claw marks

The town is also known for having the most totem poles in the world and you do see them around town, though they seem to be much smaller than the ones found in Vancouver. They are made of cedar too, the wood of choice for carving.

Ketchikan's population is around 8,000, while the entire island is 14,000. When it's tourist season the population doubles to service thousands of tourists who come daily. That's right. Today there were five cruise ships docked in Ketchikan. 

I signed up for a walk in a rainforest, named the Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary, which was about a 20-minute ride from the pier. Both our drivers to and from the sanctuary were funny and entertaining with their stories of living in the town. Almost all the young people I've encountered here are in Alaska to earn money, but also some genuinely love the outdoors and the lifestyle. 

Our guide for the rainforest walk wasn't a local but from Montana. Nevertheless, she seemed to know what she was doing as she took a dozen of us on a 1 mile walk around the trail. We were told this area gets 13-16ft of rain per year, which compares to Seattle at 5-7ft of rain. In addition Ketchikan only gets 2-3ft of snow per year, so it's more wet than cold.

The rainforest, which is part of the Tongass National Forest, reminded me of Pacific Spirit Park but with a lot more moss and narrower trails. The guide told us interesting facts about things we saw along the way, such as skunk cabbage grown on the ground are eaten by bears as a laxative, and there are berries grown here such as salmonberry, huckleberry, and blackberry. The blackberry's leaves have medicinal uses too.

A tree that grew from a nurse log

She told us 90 percent of this rainforest's trees are either the western hemlock or the sitka spruce. How can you tell the difference between the two? The western hemlock has stripey bark like bacon, whereas the sitka spruce's bark are shaped like fish scales. 

The forest floor is not deep when it comes to soil, so the roots spread out, or in some cases, young trees will gain its nutrients from fallen or dead trees called nurse logs. They can have up to 100 years' worth of nutrients stored up for "baby" trees. 

Our guide showed us a tiny sapling and explained it was 5-7 years old, and a "teenager" was about 50 years old. A mature tree could be up to 500 years old or even 1,000 years old. And the moss hanging on many of the trees? They are called "old man beards" and they are sterile enough to be used to bandage wounds; I was told a while ago that they make good toilet paper!

She also showed us a tree trunk that had bear claw marks on it, as the bear had climbed up the tree!

Not long after we saw a live black bear in front of us which was quite the excitement. Our guide advised us to wait for a few minutes to give the bear some space to leave. And to our left we could see two cubs running around in the forest. 

See the young bear in the stream in the middle?

We spotted the bear again this time under the wooden elevated walkway we were on, and then further in the distance in a grassy area in low tide. There is a stream that leads to the salmon hatchery and this is where the bears are waiting for the salmon to return. The area gets high tide and low tide twice a day which is an interesting fact. 

There were also two bald eagles in the distance circling around in the sky. Hope they didn't think we were lunch...

All of us on the tour were so thrilled to see the black bears, while our guide was probably relieved nothing happened! She added we were so lucky to have blue skies as it had been raining for three weeks straight!

Alaska Rainforest Sanctuary

4085 Tongass Avenue

Ketchikan, Alaska

Picture of the Day: No More Blackberries

The excavator is busy clearing the land along Imperial trail

At Pacific Spirit Park in Vancouver, there are several wild blackberry bushes along the trails that have a lot of sun in the summer.

The blackberries come out in late July, August and September. The ripe ones are easy to spot with their dark colour, but if they aren't easy to pick, then they aren't ready -- they are very sour!

Along Imperial trail, there's are many wild blackberry bushes, but not many now. An area has been fenced off with an excavator there pulling up the thorny bushes and clearing the area.

A sign from the city says: "In this area, invasive Himalayan blackberry is being removed and native species are being planted to improve forest conditions and increase biodiversity. Healthy ecosystems are more resilient to the negative effects of climate change, such as insect infestation and drought."

So no more blackberries... it was fun to forage while it lasted...