Blueberry Pickers

First of all, I must confess that the pictures in this post are not recent.  They were taken at the end of July on a very hot summer day for SE Alaska.  It seems like such a far cry from the weather we're experiencing now.  We're practically done with fall already.  In fact, the near permanent dusting of snow on the mountain peaks around our house are telling us that winter is not far away.

Nevertheless, I wanted to share our little family's love for picking wild blueberries.  Each one of my children had their first experiences with berry picking while they were nestled into a baby carrier of some sort.  So I guess they've never known a summer without berry picking of some kind.  In the Juneau area blueberries are the most easily available of all wild berries.  We've tried picking in several different spots and each spot seems to be more fruitful :) than the last.   This year we seem to have found the perfect spot.  So perfect in fact, I'm not sure I can bring myself to publicly identify it's location.  The berries are in such abundance there that we picked that location a total of 3 times this year.  One of those pickings was a final fall harvest in September that I took the little babe on while the other two were in school. 

These photos are from our first picking this summer.  You have to walk along a pretty decent trail to get to the alpine berries, so we were hiking along for a while hoping the berries would be as amazing as we were told.  Notice my doubting comrades in the photo below.  They both took turns be the party poopers of the the group and requesting that we turn back.  But we pushed on and found a berry pickers gold mine.

The little babe was all business on this outing.  He was a really productive little berry picker.  I thought I would be using the bucket he's got in this picture, but you can see he was determined to fill it himself.

We used these berries in some delicious recipes this summer and had plenty to put away in the freezer for future blueberry pancakes, muffins, and the like.  I hope to share some of my favorite recipes to use these lovely wild berries in.

A few years ago, we got the kids these berry pickers for Christmas.  They are called a child or hiker size so they are easy for them to handle.  They both had a good time seeing how quickly they could fill their pickers.

And it didn't take too long to fill the pickers since most of the bushes were loaded with berries.

Soon it was time to head back.  It's hard not to notice the happier faces on these two on the way back compared to the way in.  Just something about a successful day of berry picking to lift your mood.

What local food do you make sure you harvest each year?