My husband is truly my huckleberry. While not entirely excited to spend the morning in the heat of an Idaho August day, he lovingly volunteered to go with me hunting down one of my summer obsessions:
the wild Huckleberry!!!
Huckleberries are similar to blue berries but, in my opinion, sweeter. No one has been able to commercially grow them, so they have to be picked wild. The plants like the soil under pine trees in an area that wild fire has burned through 15 years prior.
The huckleberry community can be very territorial and hush, hush about known patches, so MIL and I were incredibly blessed on our first outting last year when we ran into a couple seasoned Idaho adventurers who let us in on some hints. The plants are no taller than knee high and typically grow on north-facing slopes. Armed with this information, we did end up finding some last year! Today, I was just hoping I'd be able to remember what the bush looked like.
It wasn't too long after finding the correct road that lead to the north-facing slopes that I spotted these from the car:
(The arrows are pointing at actual huckleberries, both in front of my leg and to my side. The sparkling purple berries of deliciousness that caught my eye in the car are on the right side of the photo with the white arrows.)
And a couple closeups:
The hardes part was leaving some of the berries behind, even if they aren't quite ripe yet. Oh well, now I know where to head on the next trip!
The day's bounty.
No comments:
Post a Comment