When my sister-in-law Chris invited me to go back to her folks' house with her and check the elderberries, I hesitated to even take a bucket with me. Elderberries are hard to find in the wild anymore. And if we did find them, they would surely have already gone by.

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I took a five-gallon bucket and a pair of pruners anyway. And it's a good thing. We tramped through the tall grass as the light of the August day began to fade. Chris remembered roughly where the bushes were in the thicket, but she wasn't sure. "Take a photo of that area over there with your phone," she said. I did and handed her the phone. She enlarged the photo, and there they were. Huge umbels of dark purple elderberries deep in the thicket ahead of us. I was NOT leaving until we had them in the bucket.

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I pushed through the brambles and blackberry vines. Chris followed me with the bucket in her hands. I cut bunches of elderberries and passed them over my shoulder to Chris. The biggest bunch, heavy with berries, was about seven feet up and in near darkness. We HAD to get it. I leaned my whole body into the thicket and pulled down the branch until we could reach it, and it went home with us. 

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It takes a lot of elderberries to make a batch of jelly. The 3/4 of a bucket we got that night made a small batch, and it was worth the sweat, torn clothing, briers and scrapes. Because there is nothing like the rich, complex, ever-so-slightly bitter flavor of fresh made

elderberry jelly. 

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Ingredients: elderberry juice, lemon juice, natural fruit pectin, sugar