Berry season

Time to check, once again, before the birds beat me to them. I grab a bowl from the house and trudge out to the blueberry patch between the smaller high tunnel and my studio yurt. So close…just a handful is ready, but many are deep purple, so we’re just days away from a first real picking.

Berry season is part of the delight of living on the farm, starting with strawberries, then raspberries, then blueberries and blackberries. Strawberry season recently wrapped up, and Mom and I were in the kitchen de-topping flats and flats for making into jams and syrups, our fingers sticky and stained red. It’s difficult to resist popping several in my mouth while packing some of the ruby nuggets into bags to freeze whole for smoothies in wintertime.

Not only are there the domestic ones but also the wild variety growing on the edges of the forest and paths. Wild raspberries grow on the rim of the wetlands on my walk from the house to the garden, and I pick a few and nibble, the tangy flavor of the wild fruit exploding in my mouth as I head for the zucchini patch. It’s a delightful pre-breakfast treat as I work to beat the mid-day heat with an early harvest.

While we have two rows of blueberry bushes on our farm, these are certainly not enough to meet our needs for CSA shares, gelato, and winter freezing for muffins and pancakes. For years, we’ve worked with Highland Valley Farm in Bayfield, heading north for long days of picking loads of flats to bring home. So delicious! Our fingers return deep purple on these days, the fridge filled with bins of flat for sorting, cleaning, packing, and freezing.

Much of the fruit ends up in our sheep milk gelato as well, and we’re excited to announce that Highland Valley Farm will have cups of our tasty frozen treat available at their farm this picking season! It’s a win-win partnership as the flavors include their berries too.

This year, with all the rain, the wild blackberry bushes are loaded with tiny, white fruits. I eagerly keep tabs on them as I spin by on my bicycle, which is my current commuter vehicle between the house and Farmstead Creamery. The birds beat me to the red currants this year, but I’m going to get some of those blackberries! On drought years, they just shrivel up to nothing, but this year we’ll hopefully have a bumper crop.

Then there are also our black currants, which make the deepest purple jam you can imagine, and Kara’s black currant lemon gelato is one of my current favorites. Packed with antioxidants, these round orbs are too tart for me to eat right off the bush, but they come to life in these treats. In 2004, I had attended a summer sustainable agriculture course at Northland College, which included working on one of the professor’s farms. He grew black currants for a winery, and he sent me home with three little bare root twigs, about the size of a pencil each. These we planted along the edge of the yard where their feet could be damp from the wetlands, and since then they have grown and spread into a massive bank of black currants. The birds get there fill too, but there is always plenty to go around!

Berry season is always wondrously short, and we can extend that to other northern fruits like cherries. When the time comes, don’t wait, get out and pick or swing by a place and snag a pint or two or five. The flavor leaves anything trucked in from far way in the dust, and there’s nothing like popping one in your mouth that is still warm from the sun. You can tell these fruits are so good for you just by how they make you feel when you eat them, and having berries all over our farm is part of our edible landscape—both wild and domestic varieties. We even have some hybrids now, as a cluster of raspberries that have sprung up beside the chokecherry patch are clearly somewhere between the wild ones by the creek and the domestic ones on the hill. Who knew? They taste great!

Last night, as Kara was packing round bales away by the edge of the pasture, she noticed a patch of wild blueberries on the edge of the forest. “It looks like they’re ripe!” she announced at dinner. Time to check those out soon before the bears find them.

So, this week, learn about where berries or deliciousness made from berries are in your area, grab a basket, and take some time to pick. I know I’ll be picking this week! See you down on the farm sometime.

Laura Berlage is a co-owner of North Star Homestead Farms, LLC and Farmstead Creamery. 715-462-3453 www.northstarhomestead.com