Mt Baker Berry Picking

This past week I took a day off work and went up to Mt. Baker with Mom, GG, Uncle Fred and Debbie to pick berries. It was a gorgeous day for it. The berries were small, and somewhat patchy, so we didn't get the volume we were hoping for, but they are so tasty it hardly matters.

 

 

 

The star attraction on these high-alpine berry expeditions are the wild, low-bush wild blueberries that mingle with the heather to form a 6-8" high ground cover in the meadows. These mountain slopes also feature an array of huckleberries, standard (not low bush) blueberries, salmonberrries, and even a few thimbleberries tucked into sheltered creek beds. All of these are tasty, but none compare with the low-bush blueberries.

 

In case you've ever wondered the difference between Huckleberries and Blueberries, the simplest way to tell is the position of the berries on the plant. Huckleberries (bottom) hold their berries up proudly, above the leaves. Blueberries (top) hide demurely below their leaves. The leaves are also somewhat different; Huckleberry leaves are pointed at the end while blueberries are rounded. Blueberries are also usually blue-er, and huckleberries are generally more purple-black, but color is not always a reliable indicator of which is which.

The Sunflowers

The sunflowers in my garden this year are off the hook.  They're all volunteers, I didn't plant a single one this year - obviously I didn't need to!  The light yellow, multi-branching ones are especially impressive - I counted no less than 36 blooms open on just one plant (and that's without counting the ones that were over or the buds yet to bloom).  It's incredible. 


Grandma Joy's pose says it all!


 

GG and Conan admire some of the more unusual sunflower types.  In addition to the standard yellow and orange, we also have a few ringed with dark red and one that makes a giant orange pom-pom of petals.

 

In the cold frame, the pepper plants are doing amazingly well, producing tons of peppers and generally looking happier and healthier than any other year's plants ever have. 

 

This is one of our new berries, the Aronia.  This is the first year it has fruited for us, and it pulled out all the stops.  The plant isn't very big, but it is absolutely covered with berries.  The berries are black and fairly firm, even when they are ripe (or at least, we think they are ripe).



The berries are tart and astringent eaten straight off the bush, but have a good flavor overall and are certainly abundant. With GG and Conan's help I picked 4 quarts of berries and made a little over 5 pints of delicious jelly.

Berries

It's that wonderful time of year again... berry time!

This is a Goumi berry. This is the first year it's fruited for us, and I'm pretty impressed with how much fruit it produced! The ripe berries are pleasantly sweet, with a little bit of astringency that reminds many tasters of persimmons. They have a single pit and look somewhat like very small cherries with speckled skin.

Conan and Moira and Kiah all seem to like them a lot. The deer like the bush and would probably eat the berries too, but we've been keeping it safe with wire fencing.

The salmonberries are ripe now also, and it's a bumper crop this year. Every day when we get home we walk around the perimeter of the yard and pick them. Most get eaten on the spot, but sometimes we are lucky to find enough to put some away in the fridge for breakfast the next morning.

The wild blackberries are just starting to ripen. Looks like a nice crop of them, although there never seem to be more than we can eat of these little jewels.

This morning's berry haul. Clockwise from top: Strawberries, Goumis, the first two ripe raspberries of the season, wild black currants, the first blueberry, salmonberries, wild blackberries, and Gooseberries. Is there anything better than ripe berries fresh from the yard?

Blackberries

Let's cheer things up around here a little!

Strawberries

Conan likes them! These plants were pretty useless (according to him) until recently, when they started having yummy berries on them. Now he checks the berry patch every day when we get home.
He ate about a dozen green berries (well, nibbled them, anyhow) before he got the idea that the red ones are the ripe ones. Yummy!

We have the berry patch well covered with bird netting that attaches to the sides of the raised bed which helps keep Conan from eating all the red berries and then starting on the green ones. :)

NW Summer = Berry Time

For Anita's birthday on Sunday I picked an assortment of berries and made a cobbler. It was so good! We are really lucky to have so many berries available, I picked all these just walking around the yard. 10 different berries were included: blackberries, tayberries, raspberries, marionberries, wild (cascade) blackberries, blueberries, salmonberries, thimbleberries, gooseberries and strawberries. The strawberries, salmonberries & gooseberries are almost over, and the others are just now coming on. This brief seasonal overlap when all of them are available is a magical, tasty time.

Here's another berry treat, this is the Father's day pie I made (back on father's day, naturally). It's my grandma Mary's fresh strawberry pie recipe - which is simply THE BEST berry pie recipe - but instead of strawberries I made it with salmonberries. Wild and yummy!

For anyone who wants to give it a try, here's the recipe:

• 1 baked pie crust, cooled
• aprox 4 cups any kind of berries (enough to fill the pie crust) washed, de-stemmed, strawberries sliced if needed for uniform sizing

For the lining:

• 8 oz cream cheese
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla

For the Glaze:

• 3/4 c. sugar
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 c. water
• optional: a few drops of food coloring or berry juice to color the glaze

Blend the cream cheese, sugar, and vanila until smooth. Spread a uniform layer over the bottom and up the sides of the crust. Essentially you are waterproofing the crust, keeping it from getting soggy from the berries. Distribute the berries over the creamcheese layer in the crust. You can get creative aranging them in pretty spirals or rows, or you can just dump them in and shake the pan to level them out. Combine the glaze ingredients (remember - add water to cornstarch, not cornstarch to water) in a saucepan and bring to a boil on medium heat. Stir gently and constantly, otherwise it will get wierdly lumpy. Cook the glaze for 5 minutes, then remove from heat and let cool for 5 more until it starts to thicken. Pour over the berries. Chill the pie for 2-3 hours before serving.

First Strawberry

I just ate the first ripe strawberry from our berry patch. I probably should have left it until tomorrow, but it was worth it. MMMM! Looks like it's going to be a good crop this year too. They are loving this heat we've been having, I've been giving them water every day and the berries are large and plentiful.

I was getting excited about giving Conan his first taste of strawberry, but then I found out that strawberries are one of the foods you aren't supposed to give babies under 1 year old. They could have a bad allergic reaction. No raspberries or blackberries either! Luckily blueberries are OK so he wont have to wait a whole year for his first berry tasting.

We haven't actually started him on solid food yet, we are waiting until he's six months old. But that isn't very far away now (just about a week! Wow.) and I'm getting really excited. I think he's going to really like food. It would probably be fine to go a little early, but it makes it feel a little more special to wait until his half-year-birthday. I haven't decided yet what to start with - rice cereal, or something more exciting like avocado or yam, both of which are supposed to be good first foods.

I've been spending some time reading about how to make & freeze simple baby foods, and I think it's going to be really fun. I can hardly wait for the peas and carrots in the garden to be ready to harvest so I can cook them and mash them, and then have them smeared all over the place and maybe - maybe - get some in his mouth. :)

Jelly & Pickles

I went out in the morning yesterday and picked wild himalaya blackberries from the patch in our field. The rain all last week was hard on them, many were so soft they disintigrated at even the gentlest touch. I was still able to pick about 6 quarts of ripe juicy berries, enough to fill my biggest pot halfway up, in just over an hour. The berries aren't as sweet as they would have been with a bit more sun, but they sure are extra juicy. Perfect for Jelly!
I got about 3 quarts of juice out, enough to make 14 jars (the jars vary in size from cups to pints) of yummy jelly. With a little left over for a couple peices of test toast. :)
I also made a batch of crosscut dill pickles, 7 pints. This is my second batch of pickles this year.

Unfortunately my first batch (bread & butter pickles) came out short on the liquid so we won't be putting them up for winter, the seal is good but the top couple inches of pickles will dry out. Instead we are using them up as fast as we can... there are worse problems to have than lots of delicious pickles that need to be eaten though!

Garden Bounty

I harvested the second planting of peas and got real nice crop. Shelling them all took quite a while, but it's worth it, they are so tasty. I don't have enough to really put any up for winter, but we'll enjoy having fresh peas for dinner for several days before we run out. :)
Between yesterday and today I made 2 batches each of jam and jelly. I used Pomona's Universal Pectin, which allows you to use much less sugar than the standard Ball pectin and still get a great set. I even did two batches sweetened with honey! From left to right: Peach Jam with Honey, Plum & Cherry Jam (regular sugar), Red & Black Berry Jelly with Honey, and Red & Black Berry Jelly (regular sugar). The house smells great and the pantry looks wonderful with all these beautifully colored jars of homemade yumminess stacked up.

Soon I need to start making pickles, my cucumbers are starting to produce more than we can eat on salads. The yellow bush beans are starting to come on, I was able to pick just enough for dinner a couple nights ago. And the zuchinni is starting to really take off, I need to keep and eye on it to make sure it doesn't get too far out in front of me. I love this time of the summer in the garden!

In baby related news, last night we did indeed move the TV, Couch, and assorted other stuff out of the baby's room. Thanks, Guzstiltzmans! We're going to rent a steam cleaner and clean the carpet, and then we'll be ready to start moving the things we already have (a dresser and a rocking chair) into the room. We have another dresser and a shelf that may also go in there, but they both need a coat of fresh paint before they go anywhere, so that's another project. I'm super excited... or have I mentioned that already? ;)

Berries, Jam & Jelly

Saturday morning I picked berries. I got quite a haul! Tayberries, Gooseberries, WILD cascade blackberries, the first of the raspberries and the last of the strawberries. For those of you who have never had the chance to taste our wild, native cascade blackberries, they are marvellous - tiny, intensly flavorful, and sweet. I clambered through the bushes all around the yard, and got pretty scratched up in the process, but it was worth it. There's a king's ransom worth of these little gems in that colander.
This is our entire gooseberry crop for the year. I mentioned a while back that we had put a remay tent over the bushes to keep the sawflys off. Well, it worked perfectly to keep the flies and their voracious larvae off, but it also raised the temperature (remay is commonly used to protect plants from frost) and I believe that caused a lot of the berries to drop off prematurely. We noticed the problem a few weeks back and switched the remay out for a traveler's mosquito net that I had from back in my south america study-abroad days. It's working just as well to keep the bugs off, and the remaining berries ripened nicely. Next year we'll get it right from the start!

The Tayberries continue to impress. We have three of these plants along the fence, and they are absolutely covered in huge red berries. This is only their first year producing (they were planted last spring) so I can hardly imagine how many berries we'll be getting in future years. The new canes they are sending up - next year's fruiting vines - are super vigorous. Tayberries are a blackberry-raspberry cross from Scotland, they have the vigor, berry size (as well as seediness), and habit of the blackberries and the color and flavor of the raspberry. Amazing.

What to do with all these berries? Make Jam & Jelly of course! Charlotte came over in the afternoon and together we put up three batches of tasty summer preserves. The blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries went into a mixed-berry jam. The Tayberries are pretty seedy, so we cooked them down into juice and made one batch of straight tayberry jelly, then we cooked down the gooseberries into juice and made a final batch of jelly with a tayberry-gooseberry blend. They all set perfectly and taste amazing!

Berries & Berries-to-be

Our strawberries are ripening! I've been picking a good double-handful of ripe berries every day. Maybe not enough to make jam, but they sure do make a delicious breakfast, desert, or blog-side snack. :)
The blackberries, marionberries, tayberries, and loganberries we planted along the cedar fence last summer are absolutely loaded with blossoms and berries.
Some are quite a bit earlier than the others, this one is all done blooming and looks like it is set for a glorious harvest. These berries are going to be huge!
The blueberries have also set respectable crops, and the gooseberries are fully loaded again this year. Since we had so much trouble with the gooseberry sawfly larvae stripping all the leaves off the bushes last year, we covered the gooseberries with a tent made from floating row cover material a few weeks ago, when we saw the first signs of insect activity. The idea is to keep the adult flies from being able to lay their eggs on the gooseberry leaves. So far, it seems to be working - the plants are bushy and leafy and look tremendously healthy. The tent looks a little wierd, like some kind of squat white ghost in our yard. But it sure beats spraying or trying to catch and squish all the larvae by hand!

Beans, Blossoms and Bugs

Warm weather over the weekend brought out the first flowers and really made it feel like summer at last. The strawberries are really looking good, they are in full bloom now under their protective netting.
The first Pea blossoms opened yesterday, and the plants are loaded with buds so I know more will be coming soon. These are the ones I got as starts from Dave, the second batch I planted from seed is only a few inches high - it'll be a while before they bloom, but they are looking really good too.

The Rosemary I planted in the fence flowerbed is in full bloom now, and wonder of wonders, the asparagus I planted way too early (in February!) has actually come up. Granted it's really thin and little (compare the asparagus stalk to the rosemary leaves) but I had given up hope it would even sprout. However, it looks like 6 out of the 8 roots I planted made it, yay!

The beans I planted last Saturday all came up, in unison, yesterday. It was amazing to see how much they grew from the morning when they were just starting to poke through the soil, all bent over and still in their seed casings, to the afternoon when they stood stiffly upright with their little leaves proudly unfurled.

Here's another surprise, the bleeding heart I planted at the same time as the asparagus not only came up but actually flowered. I just "found" it on Sunday, already in full bloom in its shady little nook in the tree island. Good thing I didn't miss it entirely!

This Calendula overwintered at the corner of the house, survived an early spring weed-whacking, and is now covered with big yellow daisy-like flowers, occasionally hosting yellow hunting spiders like this one.
The wildflowers are also beginning to bloom, such as this wild red columbine growing at the edge of the bushes behind the pergola.
Deeper in the shady parts of the woods, the False Lily-of-the-Valley (maianthemum dilatatum) is in full bloom. This is one of my favorite wild places on the property. I don't have a real path to it yet, but I make a point to scramble through the thimbleberries, alders, blackberries and tall grass every few weeks just to admire the lush and beautiful green of the leaves, moss and ferns.

Today, however, the tranquility was shattered by the scolding of several small birds who really didn't approve of the fact that the cats had accompanied me on my walk (as they often do when the weather is nice). They must have a nest or two in the vicinity; I'll give them a little time to raise their babies in peace and safety before I go back to visit my spot again. I guess my maternal empathy is starting to kick in!

Saturday Sunshine

It's an absolutely beautiful day. I worked outside in the garden all morning until I wore myself out, so I decided after lunch I'd take some pictures instead of working . :) Of course, now I'm tired again... might be time for a nap in the hammock!

The biggest project this morning was building a bean tipi. I cut down and limbed 8 saplings, wired them together at the top, and pressed the bottoms into the dirt several inches. I planted "black seeded yard-long" pole beans on the tipi. I've never grown this variety before, but somehow I ended up with a seed packet, probably picked it up for free at a trade show. Next to the tipi are a couple rows of bush yellow wax beans as well. It feels good to have my beans in, finally!

In the backgound behing the bean tipi, you can see some of the greens and chard I planted earlier. They are doing extremely well, after all the rain we've had they are loving the sunshine. The Pak Choi is especially lovely:

I also planted the center bed with several of the wedding favor seed packets that we had left over. I put the wedding plaque that my cousin Heather and her family gave to us in the middle of the bed. Aw.

The gooseberries are doing great, as you can see below. They are covered in tiny (difficult to photograph!) green berries, and have lots of new growth. The tasty and underappreciated berries appear to be a real winner in our yard, we'll have to put in a few more plants.

Lest this all seem a little too idyllic, Sanford brought home a young bunny for his lunch. This is the second one (that I know of) so far this spring. He's quite proud of his hunting prowess and seems to enjoy showing off his kills, so naturally he decided to eat this one under the picnic table.
I'm just glad he kept it outside.

Strawberries, Catnip & Mushrooms

We accomplished a lot of different projects this past weekend. Here are some of the highlights: First, I'm really glad to have a protective net over the strawberry planter: Not only will it protect our not-too-far-off strawberries from the birds, it will keep the cats out of the planter. It had been getting a bit too much feline attention lately.

Speaking of cats, we also planted them a catnip patch. It is protected by an old wire freezer basket, turned upside down and staked at the corner with tent stakes. The idea is that the cats can nibble the parts of the plants that grow out past the protective cage, but they won't be able to uproot the plants or chew them all the way down to the soil.
There are three plants under the cage. The middle one got caught out in the open and seriously chewed before we planted it, but I think it will recover.

The biggest project was to innoculate a mushroom log. We bought a bag of 100+ Shiitake spawn dowels from Cascadia Mushrooms at the farmers market a couple of weeks ago. While there were a few trees that came down on our place this past winter, after reading the instructions we learned that you are supposed to innoculate a log within 6 weeks, to avoid the possibility that some other fungi got there first. So we decided to cut down a new tree for our mushroom patch. We chose an aspen near the rope swing, in a shady area on the north side of a thick patch of trees and bushes, but where we can easily get to it for harvesting and tending.

After cutting down the tree, we proped the log up off the ground a few inches with some concrete chunks from our rock pile. The instructions say to do this to keep bugs from getting into the log. Then we started drilling holes - lots of holes! Into each hole we pounded one of the innoculated dowels. Then we sealed over each dowel with tree-heal, which keeps the moisture in and prevents other microbes from getting inside. The idea is to get the spores into the wood while keeping the bark more or less intact. This is what the finished log looks like:
The black spots are the tree-heal latex pruning sealant. When we cut the tree down, it broke into two peices. Our bag of dowels was only enough to do one peice of the tree, so we are thinking we might get another kind of mushroom to do the second log - maybe oyster mushrooms. For now we just left the second log lying alongside the shiitake log.
It will take anywhere from 6 months to two years before we get a crop of mushrooms on our log. But when we do, MMMM! It will be worth the wait. :)

Puttering

Today we went shopping (with our wedding gift cards - yay!) at some local nurseries, and then came home and puttered about the yard until it started raining. One thing I did was buy some tree-heal and tape, and take care of this huge wound that the Japanese Cedar suffered sometime previously in the winter. Poor little tree! It looks much happier now, I trimed the branches and torn bark away and got it nicely sealed. I have no idea how the damage occured.

We also got some new strawberry plants so now the raised garden bed on the south side of the house is 100% strawberries. Last year this was our whole garden! We are planning to dig up a new, big garden for this year. In the background of this picture, you can see some of the corner stakes marking out where we are thinking of digging.
We also got a base for the sundial we received as a wedding present, and a clear half-dome cover to better protect our birdfeeder from the rain. Last but not least, we got a beautiful red oxalis to put in the plant holder by our front door, which really brightens things up!