They're looking like it might be good this year. Unfortunately, these are inside the unit and will probably get squished. But, in a couple years, maybe it'll be better and I will have a new super secret patch.
Huckleberry Forecast
- Thread starter slowp
- Start date
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Rookie1
Addicted to ArboristSite
Im 'tarded,tell me about huckleberry. Do we have them in Ohio?
Im 'tarded,tell me about huckleberry. Do we have them in Ohio?
I wouldn't know. I've never been to Ohio.
Metals406
Granfodder Runningsaw
The 'Huckleberry' slowp is talking about is actually a Blueberry, and not a true Huckleberry.
They are a special species usually found in the mountains... They can be found in NW Montana, and parts of ID, WA, and Part of BC.
The University of Montana has been trying to cultivate and domesticate the species, but to no avail yet... It will only grow wild.
If you haven't ever had Huckleberry pie, or crisp, or cobbler... You haven't lived.
It has it's own distinct flavor, that you won't find anywhere else.
YUMMY!
They are a special species usually found in the mountains... They can be found in NW Montana, and parts of ID, WA, and Part of BC.
The University of Montana has been trying to cultivate and domesticate the species, but to no avail yet... It will only grow wild.
If you haven't ever had Huckleberry pie, or crisp, or cobbler... You haven't lived.
It has it's own distinct flavor, that you won't find anywhere else.
YUMMY!
Rookie1
Addicted to ArboristSite
The 'Huckleberry' slowp is talking about is actually a Blueberry, and not a true Huckleberry.
They are a special species usually found in the mountains... They can be found in NW Montana, and parts of ID, WA, and Part of BC.
The University of Montana has been trying to cultivate and domesticate the species, but to no avail yet... It will only grow wild.
If you haven't ever had Huckleberry pie, or crisp, or cobbler... You haven't lived.
It has it's own distinct flavor, that you won't find anywhere else.
YUMMY!
Makes me jealous of you PNWerners. Thanks for the explanation.
Oh Slowp your not missin much from not been to Ohio here.
chip's-tree
ArboristSite Member
AR huckleberry
we have huckleberries in Ar and they make dang good pies..
we have huckleberries in Ar and they make dang good pies..
Metals406
Granfodder Runningsaw
Makes me jealous of you PNWerners. Thanks for the explanation.
Oh Slowp your not missin much from not been to Ohio here.
You can go here http://www.huckleberryhaven.com/ and order all kinds of Huckleberry products... All locally made here in NW Montana, from local berries.
They make a long list of products, and they're all really good... I bought 10 pounds of their Huckleberry coffee, yummy, yummy. My wife didn't care for it, but I liked it. If you don't like your coffee anything but black, you might not like it.
Their Huckleberry syrups are awesome on pancakes and waffles!
Here's the link for their coffee and hot chocolate... http://www2.mailordercentral.com/huckleberryhaven/default.asp
Huckleberry Haven makes it possible for anyone to try and enjoy Huckleberries!
Metals406
Granfodder Runningsaw
You guys have the 'True Huckleberries'... The ones we have are different. I'd like to try some real Huckleberries sometime, to see the difference.
Up here, you have to be ever watchful for Grizzle Bears while picking... They enjoy them as much as the next guy. :jawdrop:
I boycott all huckleberry products. We recreational/family pickers now have to compete with vans of "professional" pickers and they have discovered many of our formerly kind of secret patches. There'll be several vanloads of the professionals, and they pick and sell to the companies that make such stuff. We locals have to go deeper into the brush to find more secret spots.
chip's-tree
ArboristSite Member
we don't have big bears but the dang chiggers will eat you alive....I haven't found a good patch of huckleberries in a long time. guess I need to get off my lazy butt and look.
hammerlogging
Addicted to ArboristSite
Conversation from quite a few years back:
Friend: "Hey, what are you (me) doin for spring break?
Buck (regular at one bar town, at the bar):"Ah hell, he's probably goin out in the woods to eat huckleberries"
Just cracked me up. That was in TN, real huckleberries, I guess.
Friend: "Hey, what are you (me) doin for spring break?
Buck (regular at one bar town, at the bar):"Ah hell, he's probably goin out in the woods to eat huckleberries"
Just cracked me up. That was in TN, real huckleberries, I guess.
Metals406
Granfodder Runningsaw
Haven is a small business, they supports our small town with jobs, etc... I know what you mean with the "commercial" pickers though!!
We get thousands of Asians in here for Morel Mushrooms too... Those suckers will stab you over a mushroom... They, and the companies they work for aren't even from here... They're out of state suckers, that just buy a commercial permit... Same with the Huckleberry season.
The sheriff always keeps a presence during either season... There have been many foreigners arrested for making death threats, and brandishing knives to locals' out picking.
Huckleberry Haven isn't one of those commercial deals... They get a lot of their berries from local people... They're okay folks.
Humptulips
ArboristSite Guru
Down here in the low lands we have three kinds of hucklberries, blue, red and winter ( some people call them shot berries). You have to go up high to get the mountain hucklberries like Slowp is talking about. I've picked them above Grisdale and they are pretty good.
I'm more into wild blackberries and my favorite blackcaps. I do have a secret cranberry patch also.
I'm more into wild blackberries and my favorite blackcaps. I do have a secret cranberry patch also.
RandyMac
Stiff Member
Oh, Blackcaps, they make a very fine wine, so do Thimbleberries.
dingeryote
Blueberry Baron
LOL!!!!
If it's got 10 seeds you can crunch, it's a Huckleberry.
If it's got a bunch of tiny mushy seeds that don't crunch, it's a Blueberry.
If any of y'all want any of the mushy seeded ones, I got a few...LOL!!
O'l Robert Frost wrote a poem about berry patch thievery and y'all reminded me of it. LOL!
Lots of folks think Frost wrote about plain old Blueberries, but it was the Hucks, as many folks still do not differentiate.
Somebody here mentioned flavor bieng better on hucks.
I dare say that the flavor of Hucks is as good as some of the more obscure bluberry varietys, and generally better than those grown for high production such as blue crop and Jersey. However, the old Darrows, Dixi's, and even the rubles will give Hucks a run for flavor, and inspire almost as much sneaking about with an old oil pail in the moonlight.
Blueberries
By Robert Frost
1874-1963
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"
"I don't know what part of the pasture you mean."
"You know where they cut off the woods--let me see--
It was two years ago--or no!--can it be
No longer than that?--and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall."
"Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow.
That's always the way with the blueberries, though:
There may not have been the ghost of a sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But get the pine out of the way, you may burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,
And presto, they're up all around you as thick
And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick."
"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they're ebony skinned:
The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned."
"Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?"
"He may and not care and so leave the chewink
To gather them for him--you know what he is.
He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his
An excuse for keeping us other folk out."
"I wonder you didn't see Loren about."
"The best of it was that I did. Do you know,
I was just getting through what the field had to show
And over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a democrat-load
Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive."
"He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?"
"He just kept nodding his head up and down.
You know how politely he always goes by.
But he thought a big thought--I could tell by his eye--
Which being expressed, might be this in effect:
'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect,
To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'"
"He's a thriftier person than some I could name."
"He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need,
With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?
He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet."
"Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."
"I wish you had seen his perpetual bow--
And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned."
"I wish I knew half what the flock of them know
Of where all the berries and other things grow,
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.
I met them one day and each had a flower
Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower;
Some strange kind--they told me it hadn't a name."
"I've told you how once not long after we came,
I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth
By going to him of all people on earth
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had
For the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad
To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.
There had been some berries--but those were all gone.
He didn't say where they had been. He went on:
'I'm sure--I'm sure'--as polite as could be.
He spoke to his wife in the door, 'Let me see,
Mame, we don't know any good berrying place?'
It was all he could do to keep a straight face.
"If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim,
We'll pick in the Mortensons' pasture this year.
We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear,
And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet.
It's so long since I picked I almost forget
How we used to pick berries: we took one look round,
Then sank out of sight like trolls underground,
And saw nothing more of each other, or heard,
Unless when you said I was keeping a bird
Away from its nest, and I said it was you.
'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flew
Around and around us. And then for a while
We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,
And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout
Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out,
For when you made answer, your voice was as low
As talking--you stood up beside me, you know."
"We sha'n't have the place to ourselves to enjoy--
Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy.
They'll be there to-morrow, or even to-night.
They won't be too friendly--they may be polite--
To people they look on as having no right
To pick where they're picking. But we won't complain.
You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves."
Eat more Hucks and Blueberrys!!!
They're good for ya! LOL!
Dingeryote
If it's got 10 seeds you can crunch, it's a Huckleberry.
If it's got a bunch of tiny mushy seeds that don't crunch, it's a Blueberry.
If any of y'all want any of the mushy seeded ones, I got a few...LOL!!
O'l Robert Frost wrote a poem about berry patch thievery and y'all reminded me of it. LOL!
Lots of folks think Frost wrote about plain old Blueberries, but it was the Hucks, as many folks still do not differentiate.
Somebody here mentioned flavor bieng better on hucks.
I dare say that the flavor of Hucks is as good as some of the more obscure bluberry varietys, and generally better than those grown for high production such as blue crop and Jersey. However, the old Darrows, Dixi's, and even the rubles will give Hucks a run for flavor, and inspire almost as much sneaking about with an old oil pail in the moonlight.
Blueberries
By Robert Frost
1874-1963
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"You ought to have seen what I saw on my way
To the village, through Mortenson's pasture to-day:
Blueberries as big as the end of your thumb,
Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum
In the cavernous pail of the first one to come!
And all ripe together, not some of them green
And some of them ripe! You ought to have seen!"
"I don't know what part of the pasture you mean."
"You know where they cut off the woods--let me see--
It was two years ago--or no!--can it be
No longer than that?--and the following fall
The fire ran and burned it all up but the wall."
"Why, there hasn't been time for the bushes to grow.
That's always the way with the blueberries, though:
There may not have been the ghost of a sign
Of them anywhere under the shade of the pine,
But get the pine out of the way, you may burn
The pasture all over until not a fern
Or grass-blade is left, not to mention a stick,
And presto, they're up all around you as thick
And hard to explain as a conjuror's trick."
"It must be on charcoal they fatten their fruit.
I taste in them sometimes the flavour of soot.
And after all really they're ebony skinned:
The blue's but a mist from the breath of the wind,
A tarnish that goes at a touch of the hand,
And less than the tan with which pickers are tanned."
"Does Mortenson know what he has, do you think?"
"He may and not care and so leave the chewink
To gather them for him--you know what he is.
He won't make the fact that they're rightfully his
An excuse for keeping us other folk out."
"I wonder you didn't see Loren about."
"The best of it was that I did. Do you know,
I was just getting through what the field had to show
And over the wall and into the road,
When who should come by, with a democrat-load
Of all the young chattering Lorens alive,
But Loren, the fatherly, out for a drive."
"He saw you, then? What did he do? Did he frown?"
"He just kept nodding his head up and down.
You know how politely he always goes by.
But he thought a big thought--I could tell by his eye--
Which being expressed, might be this in effect:
'I have left those there berries, I shrewdly suspect,
To ripen too long. I am greatly to blame.'"
"He's a thriftier person than some I could name."
"He seems to be thrifty; and hasn't he need,
With the mouths of all those young Lorens to feed?
He has brought them all up on wild berries, they say,
Like birds. They store a great many away.
They eat them the year round, and those they don't eat
They sell in the store and buy shoes for their feet."
"Who cares what they say? It's a nice way to live,
Just taking what Nature is willing to give,
Not forcing her hand with harrow and plow."
"I wish you had seen his perpetual bow--
And the air of the youngsters! Not one of them turned,
And they looked so solemn-absurdly concerned."
"I wish I knew half what the flock of them know
Of where all the berries and other things grow,
Cranberries in bogs and raspberries on top
Of the boulder-strewn mountain, and when they will crop.
I met them one day and each had a flower
Stuck into his berries as fresh as a shower;
Some strange kind--they told me it hadn't a name."
"I've told you how once not long after we came,
I almost provoked poor Loren to mirth
By going to him of all people on earth
To ask if he knew any fruit to be had
For the picking. The rascal, he said he'd be glad
To tell if he knew. But the year had been bad.
There had been some berries--but those were all gone.
He didn't say where they had been. He went on:
'I'm sure--I'm sure'--as polite as could be.
He spoke to his wife in the door, 'Let me see,
Mame, we don't know any good berrying place?'
It was all he could do to keep a straight face.
"If he thinks all the fruit that grows wild is for him,
He'll find he's mistaken. See here, for a whim,
We'll pick in the Mortensons' pasture this year.
We'll go in the morning, that is, if it's clear,
And the sun shines out warm: the vines must be wet.
It's so long since I picked I almost forget
How we used to pick berries: we took one look round,
Then sank out of sight like trolls underground,
And saw nothing more of each other, or heard,
Unless when you said I was keeping a bird
Away from its nest, and I said it was you.
'Well, one of us is.' For complaining it flew
Around and around us. And then for a while
We picked, till I feared you had wandered a mile,
And I thought I had lost you. I lifted a shout
Too loud for the distance you were, it turned out,
For when you made answer, your voice was as low
As talking--you stood up beside me, you know."
"We sha'n't have the place to ourselves to enjoy--
Not likely, when all the young Lorens deploy.
They'll be there to-morrow, or even to-night.
They won't be too friendly--they may be polite--
To people they look on as having no right
To pick where they're picking. But we won't complain.
You ought to have seen how it looked in the rain,
The fruit mixed with water in layers of leaves,
Like two kinds of jewels, a vision for thieves."
Eat more Hucks and Blueberrys!!!
They're good for ya! LOL!
Dingeryote
Metals406
Granfodder Runningsaw
Thimbleberries are another favorite of mine! I need to go get me a bunch of them this year as well... They're like wild Raspberries.
Thimbleberries will be ripe soon. I've heard good and bad things about them. I munch on a few that grow like weeds along the woodshed, then I cut them down and they pop up again.. I'm moving to a new place now, but there's lots of himalayen blackberries, and then the better blackcap? (native) variety.
Knives? Out here there are stories of guns being brandished by the "professional" pickers. I got flagged down 2 years ago by a guy wanting the sheriff to come up. They'd apparently been camping and the other campers (pickers) started firing into their camp.
I'll carry my camera along to take pictures of bad people if they are bothersome. The Used Dog will be on hand also.
Knives? Out here there are stories of guns being brandished by the "professional" pickers. I got flagged down 2 years ago by a guy wanting the sheriff to come up. They'd apparently been camping and the other campers (pickers) started firing into their camp.
I'll carry my camera along to take pictures of bad people if they are bothersome. The Used Dog will be on hand also.
Humptulips
ArboristSite Guru
No NO you have it all wrong! You so disapoint me. I figured you were the spring of all knowledge, berry wise.
Himalaya and evergreen black berries are not native. The foliage on them is different but the berries are big, seedy. Big thorns and forms an impenetrable wall if not controlled. Good for jelly but substadard for pies and not acceptable for ice cream topping.
Wild blackberries are the small ones, native and less robust foliage. The best for pies, cobblers and ice cream topping. Almost a waste to make preserves out of such a good berry.
Blackcaps are more like a rasberry. I guess a black rasberry is what they are. Usually only show up after a burn. Don't see them as much since they curtailed slash burning.
Thimble berries are dry, seedy and scattering. OK to snack on at work but a poor sister to black caps. Usually like shade.
Shot berries are found close to salt water and mature late, Oct, Nov even Dec. Tasty but generally small, sometimes very thick so you can strip them.
WOW! Look what the bad economy has done. Nothing to talk about on the logging forum except berry picking. Maybe get a good argument going about why we use those small berry buckets.
I do know that Himalayas aren't our friends and were imported (I heard by Burbank?) and are now obnoxious weeds. But I thought those little trailing ones were natives. The ones that hang out on the ground.
Somebody told me that thimbleberries were toxic when eaten in bigger amounts too. I'm too lazy to check that out.
I'll stick to huckleberries.
I use a blue speckledy enamel little bucket to pick in. I ran my pickup over the old bucket. My favorite was a big old livestock watering bucket. You could set it under the bush and it would catch everything you dropped. But it was kind of hard to negotiate through the brush with.opcorn:
Somebody told me that thimbleberries were toxic when eaten in bigger amounts too. I'm too lazy to check that out.
I'll stick to huckleberries.
I use a blue speckledy enamel little bucket to pick in. I ran my pickup over the old bucket. My favorite was a big old livestock watering bucket. You could set it under the bush and it would catch everything you dropped. But it was kind of hard to negotiate through the brush with.
opcorn:
