to wonder why there are blackberries going bad whilst people complain that they don't have enough money to feed their family healthy food.

[froken]

We went blackberry picking today, I was expecting a couple of manky blackberries to be left because I hear so often in the media and on mumsnet people saying how they struggle to feed their dc healthy food and sometimes people saying they have a hard time finding enough money to feed their dc at all.

There was a huge amount of blackberries, we were a 20 min walk outside a major city so an easily accessible place for 1000s of families.

We picked 9 pounds of blackberries.

Aibu to think that it would be a good idea for those struggling to feed their family a healthy diet (and those struggling to feed their family at all) should be out picking the free fruit that grows all over England's public spaces?

'For the most part it's not poor people supplementing their food budget at all, it's just another twatty middle class "Good Life" pastime.'

Why are you referring to the 'twatty middle class'? It makes you sound like you have a massive chip on your shoulder.

Why would anyone be embarrassed being seen picking blackberries? How bizarre!

Lol at this thread, DS climbed a ladder by the she's this afternoon and picked loads of blaxkberries....I am in fact now eatmg a rather nice homemade apple and blackberry crumble with custard and a bit of ice cream.....tis yummy.

Our local church has just planted loads of fruit trees in the hope that in 5-10 years when they start bearing fruit that the local community will go along and help themselves. The priest says that times are hard and it's a little something he can do to help.

I love gathering blackberries and apples etc. Why not? I used to do so with my Nan who told me stories of gathering sea weed off the beach in Ireland which went on the potato crops and was also cooked to go with a meal.

Nature has many things we can harvest for free

I have lived in a(n industrialised) country where food poverty was the norm for most and still is for approximately half the population.

Everybody forages. There is enormous pride taken in foraging and preserving.

In this country for some reason it is Sunday supplement patronising cack which - despite it being about healthy food, exercise, vitamins etc - is doomed to irrelevance because it isn't the same as reversing atrocious government policies.

I honestly don't understand why it is bad to say 'here is one way you could, if so inclined, help your situation' - nobody has to forage of course (nor learn to cook nor buy in bulk nor cook communally to save money etc etc etc) but why is there a fear of saying 'look, things are shit for many people, but at this point if you don't help yourselves a bit, nobody has a mandate to fill the gap because funding is being cut'?

In comparison to picking blackberries, an allotment will produce far more food year-round for the time/effort/cost.

"In comparison to picking blackberries, an allotment will produce far more food year-round for the time/effort/cost."

And for very little more than twice the price of buying them from the shops!

JakeBullet Custard AND Ice Cream together? [Shock] That and the Fake Cream Tea thread

I am not aware that there is a waiting list to pick blackberries, there certainly is to get an allotment down here,

since when did home-grown food cost twice what it does at the shops? Someone must be on a massive hourly rate.

man cannot live on blackberries alone, but I think the OP is pointing out that it is amazing that so many are left. Free fruit. Yum.

Is here too Arisbottle 2yr waiting list I believe ~

Some vegetables cost more to grow yourself than the cost of buying them in the shops. Eg carrots, onions.

Mind you, I picked blackberries from the hedge beside our allotment this afternoon. I suppose I'm just a middle class twat!

I got told off for blackberrying in London. The ground's left wild for a reason, and that reason is to allow nature to do its ecology thing. It gets damaged by middle-class twats ripping the heart out of it for the sake of showing off to Mumsnet their friends. Up here (rural town, poor,) the berries are all gone for miles around ... as are any stray pheasants, lambs and other livestock.

I agree re the cost of allotments.

Totally ignoring the cost of transport if your allotment isnt within walking distance, and assuming you have a shed full of tools.....

I had an allotment for 2 years that I shared with my friend and we gave it up because the cost of planting and the yield just didnt add up. Seed potatoes for example, even if you get a good deal, just dont produce enough to justify the cost when you can get a 5kg bag of basics spuds for less than £3.

Add into that the sheer effort involved and tbh, it just aint worth it. Allotments are another naice hobby that the middle class use to beat the underclass with.

We have been waiting for an allotment for just over 3 years! i have no illusion about it being a cheaper option

I am a middle class twat. DH would let us snaffle a few brambles on our way back up the lane to get DS1. Apparently they could have been sprayed with anything etc etc.

This is the man who wouldn't let us eat the brambles that had taken over the garden in a rented house we moved in to. we might have just waited til he was out.

I am not aware that there is a waiting list to pick blackberries

Unless you count the 9 months of the year when there aren't any

Fair point Saffyz.

I am a bit bemused but this whole middle class thing going on on this thread! I am so not middle class, we tend to alternate between piss poor and reasonable comfortable (DP self employed), but most definately working class - if we absolutely must have a label.

The fact that we are on the waiting list for an allotment, I like to pick blackberries (probably because my parents used to take me) and make jam with it, we go and get some plums from a farm that has loads of plum trees in its hedgerows and i go skip diving does not make me a twat, and certainly not a middle class twat either. Im lucky, we live opposite an old railway line (a road that is half private terraced houses and council houses) that has loads of blackberry bushes - I don't get the berries because i am poor, i do it with DD because she likes it and its a bit nostalgic for me.

Yes the OP was wrong, but calling people middle class twats is equally as offensive imo

I should add to my post above that yes, you can use part of your yield to replant the next year but that takes a) knowledge of how to allow plants to seed etc, b) much more land than the average allotment, as you need enough to produce a good yield to eat and to allow to go to seed and c) patience, it takes a good few years to get to the point where you can harvest enough to eat and provide seedlings.

So even if every person struggling to eat was given an allotment tomorrow, at best they would get a few meals worth of veg out of it, in a years time. I am gobsmacked that anyone would think that that is a reasonable solution!

For further reading I would suggest the Time Travellers guides by Ian Mortimer. Both the Medieval and Elizabethan books explain in no uncertain terms just how hard it is to live off the land as some here are advocating.

LEM I think the only people who are being called MC Twats are those who are. No one who likes to go berry picking with the kids is a twat. Anyone who says that blackberrying is a viable alternative to a food bank is a twat.

No one who has an allotment as a hobby that they enjoy is a twat, anyone who says that the poor should grow their own food instead of using food banks, is a twat.

Let them eat cake.....

Actually another I think you will find it is

"Let them eat homemade freely sourced and ethically produced Jam"

Let them eat cake would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to say if cake grew on bushes walking distance from their house.