Posts Tagged ‘huckleberry picking’

Athough this article was originally published 100 YEARS AGO, it is still a warning for today!

The Globe reported that a large black bear had carried away a baby, 18-months-old, while the mother was picking huckleberries outside Cheboygan, Mich. The mother, a Polish woman, left the child sleeping in charge of a child who was eight years old. A sheriff dispatched a posse of 10 men and a deputy to the scene, but they were unable to find any trace of the child or the bear. A band of Gypsies from the United States entered Canada at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. They were heading west to take up farms, and had $11,000 in gold with them.

Unsolicited comments from our huckleberry rake customers

I purchased your rake at the General Store in Spokane, WA last week and headed up behind Wallace,ID to do some picking. We love going to Idaho because its so beautiful and the people are always friendly. I have to tell you first that I have Rheumatoid Arthritis in my hands along with other places. The rake was a life saver allowing me to pick for a longer period of time with out much pain in my hands. I also picked three times as much! I recommend this to anyone with arthritis in their hands to make picking berries more enjoyable and ALOT quicker. Plus in does no damage to the bush! You have perfected this product ten fold. Thank you!

Angela Ordway
Spokane, Washington

————————————–

Every year a group of ladies and I take a annual camping trip to the mountains to pick huckleberry’s when they get ripe. We took that trip a week before we could order our huckleberry rakes. Each of us working 6 to 7 hours for 2 1/2 days brought home a little over a gallon of berry each.
I oredered and received our rakes the week after we returned from our trip. The rakes came in on a Friday we met to pick on a Sunday. During that approx six hours of picking we took home approx 2 gallons of berrys each. I can only imagine how many more we could have brought home during our camping trip. Next year.
Thanks for this wonderful product and thank you for the lip balm you included. It is yummy and works well to protect the lips.
If I have any complaints about this tool is it can be difficult to use in the middle of a bush, and you have a few extra stems to pick off the berrys, but that is something we usually do when we are sitting around camp.

Tammala Froman
Lebanon, Oregon

————————————-

Ellen Bryson
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (Human Resources)
Helena, Montana

Summer Huckleberries: NW Tribes Celebrate Sacred Foods that are …
KPLU – Seattle,WA,USA
Linda Jones, left, and her sister, prepare fry bread for nearly 200 guests at the Umatilla tribes’ annual huckleberry feast near Pendleton, Oregon. …

Obama Foodorama: Lots of Obama Birthday Cake–And of Course, Pie …
By Eddie Gehman Kohan
There were Huckleberry, Coconut Creme, Key Lime, and Peach pies. The President even refers to Chef Yosses as “the Crust Master.” The photo, above, is from Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum in Washington, where the wax President and First Lady were also celebrating President Obama’s … A
Obama Foodorama – http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/

I finished harvesting the breeder plants and evaluated a few thousand more seedlings. Three of the selections continued to be outstanding and another very good. If possible, I want to release these by 2012 or sooner. A few selections had only limited numbers of fruit, but quite large. They’ll serve as parents for more crosses. I’ve attached some photos.

Reports are that berry crops are heavy and fruit size is good at lower elevations. Priest Lake sounds especially productive. I expect the size and yields to drop at higher elevations unless we receive some moisture and cooler weather.

Best wishes,

Danny L. Barney, Ph.D.
Professor of Horticulture
Superintendent
University of Idaho
Sandpoint Research & Extension Center
1904 North Boyer Avenue
Sandpoint, ID 83864
Phone: 208-263-2323
Fax: 208-263-4470
Email: dbarney@uidaho.edu
Website: http://www.ag.uidaho.edu/sandpoint/index.htm

Huckleberry Festival
Festivals: Friday-Sunday August 28-30 . Mt. Hood Huckleberry Festival & Barlow Trail Days at Mt. Hood Village Resort, 65000 E Hwy 26, Welches. …

Powell’s Books – PowellsBooks.BLOG – Berry Season
The huckleberry, which can be distinguished from the blueberry by the number and size of seeds (a huckleberry has about 10 large seeds), is a berry that may not be too familiar to people, yet is a versatile fruit with a pleasant and …
PowellsBooks.BLOG – http://www.powells.com/blog/

Wildflowers vs. Coal Mines in the Flathead
Flathead Beacon – Kalispell,MT,USA
Huckleberries even have flowered nicely and berries are forming, which (knock on wood) suggests another banner crop. This is what normal used to look like. ..

A Room of One’s Own: By the Light of the Fireflies
By Isabel
“I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, “to fresh woods and pastures new,” or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven …
A Room of One’s Own – http://a-room-of-one-s-own.blogspot.com/

Wild Indian plums ! : vancouverecotours.com
By admin
right now at the end of June the salmon berries are almost finished, the wild plums at sea level are ripe- and some of the huckleberries in the sunnier areas are getting ripe-the other day we picked about a gallon of huckleberries in …
vancouverecotours.com – http://vancouverecotours.com/

Huckleberry Picking Season in Sandpoint Idaho
It’s getting near time for huckleberry season in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the best places to visit for a huckleberry picking, noshing and hiking is Sandpoint, Idaho, about 90 minutes from the Spokane airport. …
About.com Culinary Travel – http://culinarytravel.about.com/b/

She-Smoke: Carpe Diem! Wild Huckleberries at Index, WA
By Julie Reinhardt
Yesterday we escaped to the woods to search for wild huckleberries. The thing about running a restaurant and catering company, especially of barbecue, is that while everyone else is enjoying the summer, weekends, nights and holidays, …
She-Smoke – http://shesmoke.blogspot.com/

HAVE A FUN AND SAFE 4TH OF JULY!!

Our new shipment of huckleberry rakes are currently in stock!

Huckleberry rake with wire tines

Received out pallet load of huckleberry rakes on Monday.  Since we are right on the edge on huckleberry season, we were anxious to get this pallet load ready for delivery to our customers.  But, low and behold, we opened the first case to label and deliver and realized the sent us the WRONG RAKES!!  The pickers we are selling have wire tines whereas the new ones have plastic tines.

NOTE: Huckleberry rake with wire tines that we have been selling is pictured on the left.  The Huckleberry rake with the plastic tines is pictured on the right.

The plastic in the “new” model is very thick, stiff and durable, and yet very pliable, so the rakes are well engineered. Spacing between tines is identical to the metal tines.

Both models were field tested two years ago, and any difference in performance with the metal toothed verses the plastic toothed was negligible.

So, since this was not the rakes we ordered, we received a great deal on this pallet load that we are extending to all of our customers.

Check out our website for details … and happy huckleberry picking!!

Here are more videos on huckleberries and picking huckleberries, courtesy of YouTube:

I picked some huckleberries at Harstine Island in early October, 2008

Wilderness Food:  Huckleberries.  If you do not know what it is, do not eat it. Eating plants found in the wilderness is a gamble. Know what the plant is before you eat it – there is no second chance.

The fruit of the various species of plant called huckleberry is generally edible. The berries are small and round, usually less than 1/4 inch in diameter, and contain 10 relatively large seeds. Berries range in color according to species from bright red, through dark purple, and into the blues. In taste the berries range from tart to sweet, with a flavor similar to that of a blueberry, especially in blue/purple colored varieties. Huckleberries are a favorite of many mammals such as bears and humans.

In the Pacific Northwest of North America, the huckleberry plant can be found in mid-alpine regions, often on the lower slopes of mountains. The plant grows best in damp, acidic soil. Under optimal conditions, huckleberries can be as much as 3 – 6 feet tall, and usually ripen in mid-to-late summer, sometimes in early winter or later at higher elevations.

Survivalist List Forum

Sandpoint Idaho 1976

Do you recall your very FIRST huckleberry picking excursion? (Or was this year’s bumper crop be your first time?)

I can (unfortunately!) still recall the mis-adventures of my first wild purple berry safari! Bear with me (excuse the pun) for a brief huckleberry story… the way it REALLY was, without all the romance normally associated with huckleberry picking.

1976 — I was working a college summer job for the Idaho Department of Lands, as a summer forester, and living near Sandpoint, Idaho. “TJ”, a co-worker of mine, and a “local” — well versed in the guarded, secret locations of the best and biggest huckleberries — was my guide.

After what seemed like hours of driving in my ’67 blue-n-white Toyota Land Cruiser, on a narrow, winding, dirt, logging road in the heavily wooded mountains of the Idaho Panhandle (during the hottest part of the summer) — we FINALLY arrived.

The ground was rolling to steep, and huckleberry bushes were everywhere! I got out my gallon bucket, with a paint-can style wire handle, and followed Tom’s lead into the brush. I was ecstatic … while some huckleberry plants were completely barren, many were LOADED with berries. The “good” bushes made up for the shut-outs… my fingers were soon purple.

While picking, I (with little guilt) stole an occasional morsel for my mouth, and envisioned a part-time hobby career, making money on the weekends selling huckleberries at farmer’s markets. The going rate back then was a whopping — and unheard of for “free” berries — $8 to 15 a gallon. But my dream soon diminished.

Huckleberry Picking is HARD WORK!

Within a half hour of steady picking, my expectations were down to hoping to just fill my larder with enough huckleberries to last until the next berry season! Wild huckleberry picking — in spite of the spectacular scenery, fresh air, and the chance to be outdoors — was tough work! And the worst was still to come.

Besides the dust from the late July, hot, dry weather, it was a bad hornet year, and I kicked up three nests in my ambitious pursuit of ever more and bigger berries. Since huckleberries only grow in forested habitats — often logged over — the ground was rough, and I tripped periodically — especially while running from hornets! (Not that I am clumsy anyway, or anything like that…)

From my background, growing up on a farm near Nampa, Idaho, I was more familiar with raspberries. We owned a BIG patch of black caps, and our family also went to the neighbors for U-pick red raspberries… cultivated in tall rows, on FLAT ground.

With huckleberries, the ground was so uneven (usually where the best berries were), it was often tough to stand comfortably in one spot long enough to work a bush – much less find a good spot to set the bucket where it would not fall over — but it did anyway.

I tried tying the bucket to my belt… which worked until the weight of the huckleberries started pulling down my pants, turning things even more unpleasant (especially for anyone watching!!). And to top it all, I was bent over all the time I was picking. Within an hour, my back hurt. It got worse.

The purple on my fingers slowly migrated across my face and other body parts, as I wiped away sweat, mosquitos, ticks, tree branches, and other necessary evils of the great outdoors — along with the occasional call of nature. (Purple tidy whities, anyone?)

Pretty soon, the idea of paying $15 a gallon, and sleeping in on Saturday mornings, did not sound so bad. And I felt a lot more appreciation for past feasts of huckleberry pie, pancakes, jam, and muffins!

The worst part… the part they don’t tell you when you are invited to chase huckleberries, is that picking huckleberries is like seeing how many small marbles you can hold in one hand. (Or perhaps there WAS a reason that their exact words were “chase” huckleberries!) Here is the skinny on the art of handling those little rascals!

If you try and put the berry into your bucket every time you pick one, it takes forever. So while your hand is in the huckleberry bush, you try to collect as many berries as you can before moving your hand, and dropping them into the bucket. Again, I was used to raspberries, which come with jagged edges and even a flat landing area at the bottom of the cap — so you could hold quite a few at any one time, even stack them, before losing any.

Huckleberry Picking Requires Dexterity TOO?!

But HUCKLEBERRIES ARE ROUND (or nearly so)! Using two or three fingers, in collaboration with your thumb, you pick them little suckers off the bush, while your littlest fingers are trying to hold the teaming mass of little fruits in check.

After a few berries, however, as soon as you move one finger to grab a berry off the huckleberry plant, a big juicy huckleberry you already nabbed sneaks through, and hits the ground. And in a forest environment, it’s faster to pick another berry, than dig through the ground level debris to find the one you lost.

But OH, to this day, it just KILLS me to see a big, shiny, purple huckleberry bounce down into the ground level duff, out of sight. What a waste! But in the time I spend bending over to grope amongst the forest litter, and pick it up (if I can even find it), I could pick ten more huckleberries off the bush!

After a while, I developed a rule of thumb: as soon as I was dropping one huckleberry for every one I picked, it was time to transfer the handful of berries into the bucket. (I will not EVEN go into the intracasies of trying to pick with two hands simultaneously!)

After three hours, I’d had enough. I was stiff, tired, sore, dry of mouth, and about to give in and let the growing cloud of mosquitos eat me for a late lunch. I stared at about 3 ½ quarts of huckleberries, and figured I made minimum wage. Back to the Land Cruiser to pull my shirt up for a quick “tick check”, then “Home, James”!

Oooops! Just before I got back to the logging road where we parked, my tired feet caught on a tree root… and all those beautiful, succulent huckleberries turned into a small, purple carpet covering the forest floor. (In deference to your friendly ears, I will not repeat the verbiage I used for the next five minutes. BUT… let’s just say the genetic heritage of huckleberries was put to serious question.)

For the next hour (and I had been so careful to keep leaves and bugs out of the pail of huckleberries!), I scrounged, re-picked, and otherwise scraped berries BACK into the pail. When I was done, my 3 ½ quarts of clean, shiny huckleberries had shrunk to 2 ½ quarts of dirty, little semi-smashed globes, surrounded by ragged bits of forest floor. “More protein,” my (former) friend TJ, assured me, smirking.

After I got home, I spent two hours rinsing and cleaning my huckleberries… a job that should take 20 minutes. This is SOOOO fun, I kept telling myself!

The Pay-Off – Huckleberry Pancakes & Pie!

The next morning, I sprinkled a handful or two of huckleberry delights into some sourdough pancakes, and ate them smothered in melted butter with maple syrup. I still remember the taste of that first bite. Pure heaven! It was (almost) worth the torture of picking those little purple jerks. And it just kept getting better!

The next day, using my mom’s pie crust recipe, I used four cups of berries to make my FIRST huckleberry pie. And I ate the entire thing by myself over the next three days… (OK, OK, it was only 2 days, and included a half gallon of vanilla ice cream.) And I DID NOT SHARE — and I am completely UNapologetic!

I froze the remaining quart or so of huckleberries, in a big baggie… for pancakes, muffins, shakes and ice cream. They looked so good, and tasted so good, I just KNEW I would make it back out and get some more!

But I never made it. Somehow another day of mosquitoes, hornets, dust, and sunburn did not compete with sleeping in; nor with weekend offers of a couple home brews while helping a BBQ grill create culinary delights of another variety. And, of course, my stash of purple gold was gone by Labor Day. As the song says, “STAND UP! IF you ever been there!”

Since then, I have, of course, been out huckleberry picking many times. Rarely do I get enough to last the entire year (I eat a lot of huckleberries!). And yes, I have occasionally resorted to buying some. But with the advent of huckleberry rakes, I have several gallons in my freezer in 2008, and expect to have plenty until the next huckleberry season!

Following is a couple of videos showing various huckleberry patches and huckleberry picking. Videos are courtesy of YouTube.

Two species of huckleberry found near Indian Heaven Wilderness, Washington: thin-leaved huckleberry (Vaccinium membranaceum) and oval-leaved huckleberry (Vaccinium ovalfolium).


Huckleberry picking in September on Indian Henry Ridge in September up on the North Fork of the Clearwater River. Lewiston, Idaho