A couple weeks ago Tootie and I drove up to her Papa’s place to pick figs. The birds had gotten most of the figs but there were ripe elderberries everywhere! The ones next to our pond are still green.
Green Elderberries
I picked a basket full of the dark purple clusters, covered them with a towel and brought them home. It took a few days to get them all sorted and cleaned.
Elderberries are toxic when they’re green so you have to carefully weed those out. They’re tiny, little things and sorting can take a while.
Teeny, Tiny, Little Elderberries
The stems are also toxic so you need to get as much of them out as possible. The flower heads are so pretty. They look a lot like Queen Anne’s Lace except that they’re on a bush and are larger.
Elderberry Blossoms
The blossoms as well as the berries can be used to make wine.
I don’t have quite enough cleaned berries to make wine and jelly/jam with yet so after doing some research I laid them out on a cookie sheet and froze them.
Frozen Elderberries…Oops….I missed a green one.
Cooking the berries destroys the toxins so it’s doubtful that a few green ones will cause a problem.
Tootie called 2 days ago to say she picked some more berries for me down by the river at her place. I need to run out there to pick them up so I can get those cleaned up and in the freezer. I’m keeping an eye on my bushes so that I don’t miss the berries when they get ripe!
