11/07/2026
My dream has always been that the food we grow will eventually make its way into service at the tea house.
A few years ago I planted a handful of blackberry bushes and a year ago I added several more. Now we have a entire wall of raspberries and blackberries🥹
Every year I seem to come up with a few new things to experiment with. Sometimes it’s something ambitious, like lacto-fermented ketchup made from our tomatoes. Other times it’s as simple as a blackberry pie.
While picking berries straight off the vine and immediately stuffing them into our collective gobs, a few things became very apparent:
1. Blackberries are much better when they’re cold.
2. These ones have a sh*tload of seeds.
3. With the weather we’ve been having, they’re still carrying more of a tart bite than a sweet one.
My first attempt to get the kids more excited about them was simple: toss them in a little sugar. It worked! They happily ate them… but everyone was still left with a mouthful of seeds.
It seemed like an unsolvable problem.
Then came the candy coating.
If you eat them immediately after dipping, you get this incredible warm burst of blackberry and caramelized sugar. Let them cool for a few minutes and it becomes an entirely different sensory experience. I’m currently waiting for the next batch to get refrigerator-cold before making my final judgment.
Somehow, the candy coating almost completely disguises the seeds. They’re still there, of course, but your brain barely seems to register them anymore.
I’m hoping that with more tourism and the introduction of our private tea groups, we’ll have more opportunities to do fun little experiments like this.
Because, at the end of the day, this is what the tea house has always been about.
Growing things. Learning. Experimenting. And sharing the results with whoever happens to pull up a chair.
