After a long hiatus, I thought I should give a bit of an update from the Oregon mountain top. I’ve been buried in berries. The black raspberries (wild) have basically ended, to be replaced by blackberries. Luckily I don’t have too many blackberries on our place. Himalaya blackberries are a non-native invasive species that at least is tasty. There is a cattle pasture that we drive through just before our place and that is the place to pick blackberries. There are two types of Himalaya blackberries here (Himalaya are basically where all of the cultivated blackberries come from.) We have the evergreen with a more fern-like blackberry leaf and then what I call the ‘normal’ blackberry. There are also native trailing blackberries that are especially prized around here. I haven’t yet found any secret picking spot where I could score a gallon or so at a go.
I will post my blackberry syrup adventures in a separate post. But the other berry that has started to ripen up here is the evergreen huckleberry. There are apparently about a dozen huckleberry species around the Pacific Northwest. Here on the Oregon Coast we have the evergreen and the red huckleberries. Our places has many, many evergreen huckleberries.
When I was here in May they were blooming.
Now they are just starting to ripen along the property roads.
So without refrigeration or electricity up here, I try to eat them as I pick them. I have huckleberry pancakes or huckleberries with yogurt almost every day. They are small and take quite a long time to pick, but are fantastic.
With all of these berries I still haven’t even mentioned manzanita berries, salal, or Aronia. Oh, and what about the wild gooseberries and rosehips . . .
a middling life 