Mulberry Madness celebration

Celebrate Mulberry Madness at Waverly Farmers’ Market Saturday, June 20!

The Baltimore Orchard Project will be harvesting and celebrating the mulberry, a common and sometimes maligned fruit that provides our city with a ready source of food, shade and tree canopy.

This year Baltimore Orchard Project is sponsoring a poetry contest for Baltimore students—high school as well as elementary and middle. First prize for high school is $100. Elementary and middle winners will get $50 gift card. The poem can be any style—from limerick to free vese—as ong as it focuses on the mulberry. 

You can submit entries to LWEdmundsgmail.com. Fliers are being distiibuted through Enoch Pratt Library and schools.

For the twelth anniversary of Mulberry Madness, Baltimore Orchard Project (BOP) will give out trees as long as the supply lasts. There will be pawpaw, peach and other fruit trees.

Baltimore city residents can pick up a tree or shrub at the Waverly Farmers’ Market, 400 E. 32nd Street, Baltimore, MD, Saturday, June 20.https://www.32ndstreetmarket.org.

To promote the tasty mulberries, there will be on sale a mulberry soap from You and Me Soap, jam from Atwater’s and an especially created drink from Baltimore Spirits. Gertrude’s restaurant will prepare a delectable treat from the berries, too. 

 Sometimes mulberries get a bad image due to staining cars and sidewalks. But they can be a tasty fruit, available in parks and along city streets. Plus they are full of vitamins as WebMd points out here. They’re rich in Vitamin C, potassium, iron and other good elements and low in fat.  With more sugar content than the typical blackberry for example, they can be used to sweeten waffles and pancakes as well as cobblers.

If you can’t make it to the market, try cooking with mulberries. They can make delicious snacks, preserves, and pies.   

Just try them in this recipe for mulberry cobbler, from Deborah Howard, who has been the leader in BOP’s annual celebration of Mulberry Madness over the past 11 years.

Mulberry Cobbler (Makes 1 cobbler)

Ingredients

·       1/3 cup butter

·       1 ½ cup flour

·       1/3 cup sugar

·       2 TB sugar (save for prior to baking)

·       1 cup milk

·       2 TB baking powder

·       2 cups of mulberries (removing stem is optional)

Preparations

·       Preheat oven to 325 F.

·       Add butter to the baking pan and place in oven until melted.

·       In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients.

·       Mix in milk until smooth.

·       Pour mixture into baking pan containing the butter and drizzle the berries on top.

·       Sprinkle with the sugar.

·       Bake 40-45 minutes or until golden brown.