L to R: Bailey, Tabitha, Mallory and Tanner pose with jars of Wild Stowberry Jam that they made. Photo by Meghan P.
Despite being an urban metropolis, San Francisco has a lot of urban farming going on. Just in our neighborhood we’ve got a guy who makes Golden Gate Park honey from his outer Richmond bees, and last week, we heard from a family who managed to produce some blackberry jam from berries at Stow Lake.
“My kids have been obsessed as of late with the dearth of blossoming blackberry brambles all over the Richmond. We hit up Stow Lake last week and were able to get enough blackberries to make our very own “Wild Stowberry Jam”,” reader Meghan P. wrote to us.
Ingredients: Stow Lake Blackberries, sugar, lemon juice and a dash of Richmond pride.
Sounds delicious!
Sarah B.
Blackberries picked at Stow Lake. Photo by Meghan P.
What a cute bunch of kids!
So cool. Yay Jam making.
From the San Francisco City Code:
SEC. 4.06. REMOVAL OF TREES, WOOD, ETC.
No person shall remove or take away any tree, wood, bush, turf, shrub, flower, plant, grass, soil, rock, or anything of like kind from any park without permission of the Recreation and Park Department.
(Added by Ord. 603-81, App. 12/18/81)
notice the code does not mention “fruit”
mmmm must taste like homeless camp
oh, i’d think the birds and other animals (as well as insects) would need it more — so i always resist picking even one — and then there is the question of sanitation etc.
Yum. Where can I buy?
Yeah, I hate to sound like a curmudgeon – and it’s great that the kids are learning about making food, preserving food, and being a ‘locavore’. But the fact is that if everyone did this, there’d be nothing left in the park for anyone to enjoy. It’s no different than someone going into the Rose Garden and cutting a vase full of flowers for their private enjoyment at home. (In fact, last spring I saw something even worse – a woman walking out of GG Park with a half-dozen small branches she’d cut off a blooming pear tree – she gets a week of prettiness in her apartment, and we’re left with a denuded tree.)
If the parents really wanted to teach a good lesson, then, it’d be about preserving the resources of the park for all to enjoy.
What a bunch of sourpusses you people are! The kids loved it, they did something they won’t forget, they learned something and the family had fun. So much better than all those useless weed smoking hipsters and homeless hanging around in the park and making everyone’s life miserable.
Seriously? You people complain about some kids “stealing” blackberries from Golden Gate Park? You must have completely lost your weed clouded minds.
As I say on my maps, “All natural features (with the possible exception of ripe blackberries) are protected.” Pros: teaching kids about delight, balance, thorns, where things come from, looking in hidden places, and leaving the berries you can’t reach for other people or birds. Hopefully the parents are ALSO teaching about preserving the resources of the park in this region of 6 million people, per the above examples. But an occasional jar of jam is a good teaching tool too.
No, Chuck, if they’d done it anonymously they might, but jarring it and having their images used to MARKET a PRODUCT from a national park (versus farming) is not a “lesson” beyond pimping yourself. I see what they were going for, but that’s not how it comes off. We’ll have to risk being “sourpusses” for pointing out FACTS and asking people to reconsider national resources. We’d be in trouble if everyone did this sort of thing, certainly the animals/plants/insects would be. Sierrajeff’s comment about The Rose Garden was a perfect example (and I’ve seen people do that too).
It’s not clear from this article if the items are for sale (although they are put on par with a man who does sell items), but regardless, this is not the same as HELPING the animals or teaching, or creating widespread awareness about an endangered VALUABLE insect, as the beekeeper is doing — which actually was a fascinating and endearing article.
While this is charming, and I do home canning myself, it has been my understanding for many decades that it is not OK to pick any fruit or flowers in SF Parks without first obtaining permission from staff.
When I volunteered at the Arboretum (pre Botanical Garden name change), even cuttings from gardeners prunings required permission, sometimes from a higher level than the gardener.
A fruit tree in the garden and some berry bushes can provide quite sufficient educational and culinary activities for all ages. Meyer lemons and dwarf apples do very well in this microclimate.
Hoping they didn’t get some that had been sprayed with herbicides…. blackberries are considered invasive weeds and the “natural” areas program is big on poisoning non-natives… whether SF citizens want them to or not – whether it is to people’s detriment or not…. careful.
fiddles writes: “No, Chuck, if they’d done it anonymously they might, but jarring it and having their images used to MARKET a PRODUCT from a national park … ”
Ummm, Golden Gate Park is not a national park. If you’re going to criticize, at least have your facts straight.
campmathermatters is right. Blackberries are a noxious weed and extremely invasive. I think it is cute that they made jam with them. But the only way to truly control blackberries is through chemical means. I don’t know if Rec and Parks marks sprayed areas or not.
I’m impressed there was enough sunshine this summer to ripen the berries.
Ummmmmmmm – I don’t think blackberries are a noxious weed. I think they are a gift and I love them- SFRP thinks they are a noxious weed and kills birds and insects, and now possibly San Franciscans, by spraying these luscious useful plants with poison.
I just hope this lovely clever family has not also been poisoned.
One of my favorite things to do in SF in the fall? Wander thru areas thick with blackberries and enjoy the juicy ripe ones!
Maybe not noxious…there are two main types of blackberry here in the City – the native California blackberry (purple stems, lots of small thorns, fewer berries), and the introduced Himalayan blackberry (thick green stems, fewer, bigger thorns, lots of berries). The Himalayan vines on Mt. Sutro are the ones that tend to send out tendrils 6-12 feet in a season, grow 6-8 feet tall, arch over trails, and require frequent or aggressive brushing or ample tolerance (see these along the road behind Mountain Lake). Clipping alone just makes them grow more (a perfectly natural response). Where we are clearing demonstration areas on Mt. Sutro to plant native iris or currant, etc. we cut the vines and dig them out below the root ball so they are less prone to resprout (no spraying required). Up on Stow Lake hill, that’s managed by the Natural Areas program, who tend to avoid spraying as a control method. The native vines tend to grow lower and don’t spread nearly so much. You’ll see them near the midpoint of the Historic Trail at 100 Medical Center Way, also reaching over a backyard fence in the 1600 block of Cabrillo, and in the Presidio’s coastal scrub habitat.
Depending where the berries were picked, I’d seriously be concerned about the lead content. If memory serves, most of those bushes are along roads. Otherwise, looks like an awesome thing to do.
Serious questions – isn’t harvesting berries pretty different from cutting or removing other parts of the plant. A lot of the berries simply rot off don’t they? Have we had a problem with over-harvesting berries in the past? This isn’t removing plants. This isn’t really even removing part of a plant since the berries are going to fall off or rot of naturally anyway. Unless over-harvesting is an issue I’d say there’s really no problem here. This is not like picking flowers either. Berries are something that naturally would be harvested by animals or fall/rot off – unlike flowers which the plants need for pollination.
I would also be interested to know what the letter of the law is with regard to berry harvesting.
I’d much rather see a family picking the berries & enjoying the jam they make, then continuing to let the homeless & bums “camp” in the park, littering, leaving dangerous needles & such laying about; and breaking the “no overnight” rule without ANY enforcement.