(bright jazz music) - All you gotta do is go down to the river, go to the end of your street.

The blackberries are everywhere.

They can climb up just about anything because their thorns are so good at grabbing on.

- I think the key is all about picking the right blackberries, being selective, and not just picking quantity, but quality.

- That's a good one, right there.

- Blackberries will immediately stain your hands, your clothes.

You're gonna get torn up.

Could kill a man with this.

- [Joey] Do you like blackberries?

- I hate 'em.

- They eat and eat and eat.

The thorniest branch, they don't wince.

They love the ripe berries.

- It's not a bad flavor.

It's the little seeds in it that get you.

- A truly perfectly ripe blackberry is just transcendent.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Here in the Pacific Northwest, there are a few plants that grow everywhere things grow, from urban alleyways, to islands, to open land.

Some call them weeds, even invaders.

Others call them delicious.

They're hard to kill, but that doesn't stop people from trying.

Others have learned to live with them, but most folks don't know the blackberry has a few secrets.

- The cool thing about a blackberry is it's not a true berry at all.

It's actually an aggregate fruit.

So, each one of these little drupes, so a drupe is also like a cherry or a plum.

- Okay.

- Like one fruit- - So, there's like a, it's a bunch of little plums, basically, or a bunch of- - Yeah, kind of.

- [Narrator] A single bush can climb 30 feet in a season, and once it's in, it isn't easy to get out.

They grow everywhere.

Their roots spread and can sprout new plants.

Animals, especially birds, eat the fruits and deposit the seeds far and wide.

(mellow music) - Hi, thanks for being here!

Good morning, thanks for being here, hey!

(mellow music continues) We're gonna head around that way, and then we'll hit the tip of Toe Island, which is next to Ross Island.

A couple years ago, I came up with the idea of the "Can't Beat 'em?

Eat 'em!"

blackberry campaign, just knowing how hard they are to eradicate, knowing at the same time how delightful it was for me and my son to kayak over to this very island the whole time he was growing up, and especially during COVID, to eat delicious blackberry and just to spend time together, enjoying something that is free and abundant all over the state.

(mellow music continues) - Like this one!

- Wow!

- And this Himalayan blackberry will take over anywhere that it starts to get a foothold.

This island's a great example of that.

There is so much blackberry, you would need a machete to get in there at this point.

With a lot of fruiting plants in the city, none of them are from here.

Himalayan blackberry is not from here, but they will grow, and you need to manage them in order to get good fruit from them.

Blackberries will immediately stain your hands, your clothes, you're gonna get torn up.

Blackberries are sharp, like razor blades.

I mean, those thorns are like tiny razor blades, and the thorn will not give out.

Look at this stuff, though, like, crazy.

Could kill a man with this.

It's totally worth it.

I mean, this is how you spend summer in Oregon.

We go to places.

This is what's free and abundant, which is what's a beautiful thing about living in this area.

(mellow music continues) (bright music) - [Narrator] The blackberry invasion wasn't by accident.

They evolved to cover a lot of ground quickly.

They're one of the first species to grow on disturbed land.

Once taken root, they send out underground runners to invade anywhere the sunlight touches.

Like their cousin, the rose, those thorns keep some grazers at bay and help the runners climb and spread.

- When a plant like this is growing in a spot, it's taking the space that should be occupied by a native plant.

That's just gonna displace some other organisms.

And so, it changes the whole ecological community.

- [Narrator] Blackberries are native to many regions of the world, including the Pacific Northwest, but most here today aren't native.

In the 1880s, Luther Burbank, a horticulturalist famous for the russet potato, traded seeds with people all over the world.

He received blackberry seeds in a package from India and referred to them as the Himalayan blackberry.

Burbank wanted to use them to breed a thornless variety that was bigger and juicier, but he died before he could make that a reality.

As settlers cleared forests, they created exactly the kind of open land that these blackberries love.

Today, the blackberry covers hundreds of thousands of acres across the Pacific Northwest and is one of the most abundant invasive weeds in the state.

- When you try to cut it down, you have to get the entire root system, or else it's just gonna come up.

- Yeah, so I mean, what is the, like, if someone has a blackberry bush in their backyard, and they're trying to get rid of it, like, what, like, flamethrower?

(laughs) - Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people, depending on how big your yard is and how big the problem is, this is a great job for goats.

(bright music) - I own a business called WestSide Goat Girl.

We focus on environmentally friendly brush clearing around the Portland area.

I'm super straightforward with customers.

Nothing really kills blackberries, right?

Not the nastiest of nasty sprays you can buy, and nor do goats.

But what I say is, me working with the goats, we will get you back down to a place where you can manage your blackberries or choose to dig them up.

The one approach is to dig up the bulb root.

I'll put a team of maybe 14 to 17 goats in a half an acre.

They generally can eat it down in about a week.

They love the ripe berries.

They'll eat the tender stalks.

Of course, they eat all the leaves, and they'll eat it down to, kind of like us and asparagus, right?

We like the end, and then as you get down to the chunky, stocky end, we cut that off and leave it on our plate.

(bright music continues) The reason I do this work is because I realized that if we're not out eating them, somebody's gonna spray them.

And so, I feel like, kind of one backyard at a time, we're helping people find an alternative to spraying nasty chemicals.

They can eat the thorniest branch.

Even the leaves have thorns on them in their mouth, and they don't wince.

They don't notice it at all.

(upbeat music continues) - [Narrator] So, goats can help, but blackberries are a tricky weed.

Some people fight it.

(upbeat rock music) Others have simply embraced it.

Every year, this small timber town throws a party for a weed that most people are trying to kill.

Welcome to Blackberry Fest.

(upbeat rock music continues) There's a blackberry cook-off.

- We judge taste, texture, and appearance.

- I grew up in Oregon, so blackberries have been a part of my life.

Beautiful combination of sweet and tart.

Picked them last night and then made everything this morning.

(upbeat rock music continues) - So get out and have some fun, and welcome again to the 38th Annual Sutherlin Blackberry Festival.

- So, we have this blackberry mustard to go with our hand-dipped blackberry batter corn dogs, to go with our blackberry lemonade.

- [Joey] How do you make the mustard?

You know, what goes into it?

- Oh, ho!

- Is it a secret?

- Oh yeah, it's a secret!

It's got blackberries and it's got some mustard, and it's got some other stuff in it I can't say!

- That's fair.

(muffled satisfaction) (contestant laughing) - [Narrator] And when the festival's not about the food, it's about the mud.

(engine rumbling) - So, we had a mill here in town that employed about 400 people.

It burned to the ground.

It took everything.

That was a pretty rough day 'cause all the logging community's been shut down.

We have to find something to celebrate, and find a little weed to call, you know, the Blackberry Festival.

We get to come out and join together and have a good time over a weed.

That's an experience you'll never see again.

It's not your county fair.

This is a hometown deal.

The whole community gets involved.

- [Narrator] With about 85 volunteers supporting a festival that can bring out a crowd bigger than the population of the whole town.

- [Joey] This has been a major part of your life.

- It has.

(laughs) - [Joey] Does that feel like, does that feel good?

Do you feel like you've really created a- - [Duane] I think I might have been beneficial.

You know, what we're trying to do is build community, and that's how you do it.

(engine rumbling) - [Worker] Get ahold of Duane, we'll work it out.

- [Kathryn] They're impossible to get rid of, but they're also really enjoyable.

And that's, like, the catch-22, if you will.

- [Joey] One of the things with blackberries, too, is just the thorniness of them.

- [Heather] Yeah, I'm always getting poked.

It doesn't bother me, though, I think it's a fair trade.

You gotta leave a little blood- - Sure.

- A little blood oath to the berry gods, sometimes.

- [Narrator] Blackberries never asked permission to be here.

They choked out native plants, swallowed alleyways, and became one of Oregon's most stubborn invaders.

But somewhere along the way, this weed also became something people build a summer around.

A reason to get muddy, to make a pie, to bring out a whole town to the fairgrounds.

Something impossible to get rid of and impossible not to love.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music fades)