Sir, – We blackberry-pickers are usually very shy about telling people where the good fruit sites are.
We’re afraid of finding that the best berries are gone before we get back there.
I’m prepared to let Irish Times readers in on the location of one of the best blackberry sites in Co Waterford: our Greenway near Kilmeaden.
The reason I’m sharing this is because just as the blackberries are about to ripen each year, our council sends a tractor and flail to hack off the fruit-bearing briars. The only surviving fruit is once again about 10 feet off the ground.
One of the few foods that’s healthy and free, loaded with vitamin C, and we can’t avail of it.
Blackberry picking, particularly with children in tow, is also much safer on the Greenway than along roadside hedgerows as there are no quiet country roads any more. – Yours, etc,
BILL POWER,
Tramore,
Co Waterford.