| The
Sweet Taste of Summer: Berry picking your way to heaven
by
Meg Olson
From
the first mid-June strawberry to the last of the high country
wild blueberries picked in the fall, berry season in our
northwest corner is the time to capture intense, pure flavor.
In the foothills of the Cascades you can nibble your way
through wild huckleberries, blueberries, blackberries and
thimbleberries like a bear. Farms and roadside stands throughout
Whatcom County and the British Columbia lower mainland offer
everything from succulent strawberries to enormous, exotic-tasting
tayberries.
“They always taste better with a little dirt on them,” Barbie
Kraght said when asked why pickers flock to Barbie’s
Berries to get their hands sticky-sweet picking buckets of
berries for jam, pies, the freezer or to gobble up fresh.
On a warm June afternoon the fields smell like syrup and,
finding the perfect, giant, juicy berry hiding under a leaf,
a little boy yells at his grandmother, “This is the
best one!” only to outdo himself with an even more
magnificent find a few minutes later.
Linda Haugen’s family farms raspberries, come into
their own three to four weeks after the strawberry season
gets rolling. This year she anticipates all the berry seasons
will be a little late because of a cool spring. “We
could use a little more sunshine here!” she said.
Whether they pick themselves or buy from their farm stand,
she said her customers get something extra for their drive
out to the farm. “Fresh, picked that day,” she
said. “They’re good – really, really good.” And
they’re good for you, Haugen adds, packed with vitamin
C and antioxidants. She recommends freezing them individually
on a baking sheet and packing them into bags so that “you
can pop some on your cereal every morning” and taste
summer all year. Her family also demands her famous freezer
jam. ‘It just tastes like the fresh fruit,” she
said.
Blueberry farmer Harry Williams said people come for the
experience as much as for the fresh product. “They
care about their food and they want to see where it comes
from,” he said.
Even unadorned berry picking trips are festive, driving down
the road in a car swirling with sweet, bright aroma. However,
many berry farms add to the experience with shops that bake
pies or sell jams and jellies, play areas for kids and petting
zoos. At Krause Brothers Farm in Aldergrove B.C. they recommend
you call ahead if you want one of their berry pies, baked
fresh every morning and sold out by noon. McPhail’s
Berry Farm between Birch Bay and Lynden has a spot for a
picnic break and demonstration gardens to stroll in between
bouts of picking.
You can spot the novice berry picker, eating their way down
the row – to snack is acceptable but to gorge is just
rude. “We do try and discourage it,” Kraght said,
while acknowledging sometimes you can’t help it with
a big juicy raspberry hanging in front of your nose. She
hopes a trip to the farm and a chance to meet the farmer
will help consumers respect what they put into their product,
and save some money buying from them directly.
Another way to tell an experienced u-picker is their gear:
buckets, cooler, sunhat, water. Many farms don’t offer
containers for picking, and a trip home in a grocery bag
leads to squashed berries and a dripping mess.
Raspberries are especially sensitive to the heat. Bring a
cooler full of cold drinks that can be consumed by pickers
and then their place taken by berries.
|
ARCHIVES
