Tag Archives: berry picking

Flavors of Fall: Highbush Cranberries

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We are nearing the end of our foraging for this calendar year, a year of slim pickins. Our normal berry goal is 20 – 25 gallons of berries. We usually start our year with salmonberries, then move on to strawberries, wineberries and blueberries in that order. We finish up the season with highbush cranberries and lingonberries. This year, there were very few berries. Here and there we picked a handfuls of one berry or another to eat fresh on waffles and cereal, but for the most part even what little there was weren’t of the high quality we’ve come to expect of Alaska’s wild fruit. We’ve been eyeing the highbush cranberry bushes because those have seemed the only plants that were producing good amounts of plump berries.

We’ve got our places, however picking highbush cranberries is not necessarily an easy activity. As has been the case the past few years, the bushes at our spot are loaded with bright red berries. From a little distance, one could be fooled into thinking that the picking might be as easy as simply sidling up to a bush, clawing fistfuls of berries into buckets and heading home. But… It’s a tough hike through dense growth of up-to-your-shoulders grasses, sedges and other plants to get to those berries – vegetation so thick you often don’t see the numerous tree trunks and thick branches remaining from a long-ago logging operation. You do your best to step up, over and around these old boles, but some of them are rotten enough to give way under your weight. That can result in a jarring spill. Other times you might step up a couple of feet onto a log… only to find that when you step off on the other side the drop is an additional foot or two – the added depth buried from view in the thick vegetation. Suddenly you’re reminded why you make sure to commit to your daily routine of stretching and yoga, holding that precious bucket of fruit you’ve already invested picking time into as though its a pot of gold. Still, occasionally a dump occurs… little more heartbreaking to a serious berryman. Meanwhile, as hard as you might be concentrating on the berrying – and staying in contact with your partner – you’ve always got at least one of your two ears keen for the crack of a branch, a a swish through the grass, or even a suddenly curious grunt and huff from a fellow berrier of the four-legged variety. These occasional bear encounters can send your heart straight up into your throat. You tap the canister of bear spray looped onto your belt, gently call out to let your presence be known, and hope the next thing you hear is the sound of something big heading in the opposite direction.

Sixteen seasons. So far, so good.

In spite of the work and the manageable risks, we love this fall tradition. Carefully weaving our way from bush to bush under and over the aforementioned trees, the plunking sound of berries filling the bucket, hollow and high-pitched at first, gradually becoming fuller and more resonate, the serenade of sandhill cranes trumpeting overhead as they make their way south for the winter, chevrons of honking geese, glorious fall gold, wine, crimson and amber, the tang of cooler weather… all of it a feast for the senses.

Back home, I set the gallons of berries collected in the steam juicer. The scent of the juice and pulp extracting from the berries stirs my culinary imagination. Jars of juice are prepared for the pantry. The pulp is made into a simple sweet and sour sauce, canned for the winter pantry, to reappear later as a glaze on something Jack has grilled. I’m already looking forward to hot cinnamon cranberry drinks and stir fries featuring the tangy sweet sauce.

Only a couple more foraging possibilities remain this year. Then it will be time to mulch the garden and dream about the next season of foraging.

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Summer Blueberry Picking on the Arctic Tundra

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Friends from Shishmaref after an afternoon of blueberry picking. Gathering a cupful or two of these small, tart berries growing in scattered clumps across the tundra was work… the fun kind. The following morning, we celebrated with a stack of blueberry waffles.

Accustomed to the six and seven-foot tall blueberry bushes of Oregon where Barbra and I had picked berries by the bucketful when I lived in Astoria, we were surprised to learn that blueberries were growing right under our feet on our walks through the tundra near Shishmaref. “There’s lots,” one of my students told us. “We’re going to go tomorrow. You guys can follow.”

“Follow” is the village English way of saying “come along.” And sure enough, once we learned to key in on the unmistakable Autumn-red of the bushes (if ground-hugging plants that top out at six-inches can properly be called bushes), we began finding an abundance of small, perfectly ripe, deliciously tart berries. The comparatively thick, woody stems of some of these bushes suggested that they had weathered quite a few seasons near the Arctic Circle. Growing among the blueberries were crowberries (locally called blackberries) and low bush cranberries. Elsewhere in the far north, including in Europe, there are cloudberries, perhaps the most delicious berry on earth.

We walked along in the late summer sun, finding patches of berries here and there, crouching and kneeling to pick, and then moving on to find another patch of tell-tale red. Birds were out sharing the bounty – or maybe the insects associated wtih the fruit: lapland longspurs, white-crowned sparrows, savanah sparrows, and other small birds.

The pause that refreshes. A berry-picker gazes across the open tundra on Sarichef Island where Shishmaref is located, snacking on a bag of berries that probably aren’t going to make it all the way home. The red leaves near her feet? Yep. Blueberries!

Cloudberries and Freezer Jam

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Ball Jars filled with freshly-picked cloudberries (often locally called salmon berries). We’ll add a little lemon juice, pectin, and sugar to the crushed berries, mix and simmer this in our bread maker for an hour-and-twenty minutes, pour the mixture back into the jars and put them in the freezer to set. This will provide us with some of the most tantalizing jam imaginable. Cloudberry jam… 

The morning was cool and cloudy, with mist and banks of fog rolling across Point Hope. We’d been told that we’d find berries about three miles east of town along Seven-Mile Road, and so seven of us had gathered to make the hike out. Two of the men carried 12 gauge shotguns and a third carried a side arm. Bears are always a possibility.

The wildflowers which all but carpeted the tundra when we arrived here nearly a month ago are mostly gone now, though here and there a few tiny yellow Alaska poppies and beautiful blue but deadly monkshood and other flowers are still blooming. And then, right about at three miles just as we’d been told, there they were… cloudberries, growing together in small patches where mounds of earth were just high enough above the boggy tundra to allow roots to drain. The unripe cloudberries (Rubus chamaemorus) were deep red and beautiful. The ripe ones are the amber-orange color of Chinook salmon flesh, giving their close relatives, salmon berries (Rubus spectabilis), their names.

Wherever cloudberries grow across the upper latitudes of North America and Europe, they are a prized delicacy, agreeably tart when barely ripe, becoming creamy rich and sweet as they continue to ripen. They contain twice as much vitamin C as oranges. Growing very close to the ground, the berries were surprisingly inconspicuous at first. But once our eyes adjusted to what we were looking for, the tundra seemed to sparkle with their red, orange and amber glow.

We picked for about two hours, happy to have worn Muck Boots as we slogged through the soft, wet ground. By the time hunger caught up with us and it was time to head back, Barbra and I had about three pounds of berries between us–enough for a few jars of the freezer jam which would make the hike well worth the effort.

On the walk back, the sun began to push its way through the thinning clouds, lighting the land around us. It was then that Barbra and one of our friends spotted a large white bird perched motionless on a hump out on the tundra. “It’s got to be an owl,” I said. “Let’s see.” We made our way toward the white shape until there was no doubt we were looking at a large snowy owl. These owls are huge, the heaviest in North America. When it finally spread its magnificent wings and lifted off, it revealed an underside of almost pure white–a male in its prime, grown fat on ground squirrels.

Found Berries

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It was a rainy day in late July. We were driving through British Colombia on our way back from Alaska two summers ago. The forested scene around us was lush and green. We were listening to a book on tape and taking in all the shades of green washed in a fresh downpour. We turned a corner and were met with a shocking hillside of red splashes against the green. Thimbleberries, Jack told me. He said they taste ok – a little grainy. We pulled over, donned our rain gear and headed out armed with empty cups.

The first one I picked fell apart in my hand. I tasted it. Wow! Sweet berry with a smooth seedless texture. They were beautiful. Fire engine red specks begging to be harvested. I picked and ate until my cup was full and I was soaked. These beautiful fragile berries were meant to be eaten right off the bush. My cup of harvested berries looked like a smoothie in no time at all.

Something about the combination of the lush drenched green and fresh picked berries found in the middle of a terrific drive…what a great memory.