Everbearing Strawberries - The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Please excuse me while I brag a bit...

We are in strawberry heaven, the tomatoes might be found wanting this year but the strawberries are making up the difference...not that one can really compare the two. We grow an extremely hardy everbearing strawberry plant that provides us with multiple crops of sweet berries and are thrilled with it's ability to set fruit in colder temperatures while at the same time producing numerous runners. Last year we grew one all by itself just to see how many new plants could be produced and by the end of the season counted over 60 babies. Babies begat babies that had begat baby plants...talk about vigorous reproduction. I took a picture of the whole sordid affair but of course I can't find it.

The first berries, while extremely numerous, are not very large but subsequent crops can be quite big, maybe 2-3 times the size of the originals. I will try to post pictures of them later this summer, but only if they really do look 3 times bigger....my wife says I tend to exaggerate a bit - perhaps I'll let you be the judge.:)

Unfortunately, the berries my wife is holding in the above picture were picked after a good rain last Tuesday night, we try to pick them before it rains if at all possible as wet weather tends to bloat the berries and take away some of that sweetness we so desire. Regardless, they still taste plenty fine going into smoothies and other tasty treats...it's raining again this Tuesday but we picked last night and the berries were much better.

These strawberry plants have been growing on our property for many, many years, originally given to us by my Mom who grew them before that...and as such have had adequate time to adapt quite well to our conditions, making them very special to my wife and I. We do love our Fort Laramie everbearing strawberry plants.

The Treasure Seekers

Many years ago, tempted by the promise of untold riches and after some serious due diligence on my part, we set out by canoe early one dreary October morning in search of a mysterious treasure that we had only heard whispered rumors of. A treasure that we hoped to find on the shores of a small unknown lake nestled in the midst of a large foreboding swamp.

So it was that after many hours of paddling through fields of wild rice followed by a swamp so dense you could almost walk on the surrounding quagmire of mud and becoming lost more than once we finally broke free of the mucky filth and arrived at the fabled lost lake. We were wet, muddy, and our canoe was full of spiders...thousands of little spiders everywhere. Some adventurers have snakes, others leaches, perhaps bats, we always get spiders.

Anyway, to our delight, on the far banks of this little hidden lake nestled in amongst a few beaver lodges a fabulous treasure awaited. A veritable carpeting of the finest ruby red jewels imaginable, millions of them everywhere. Amazingly, the murmurs of a lost treasure had been true after all.

The beaver lodges on the shores of the little lost lake.

My wife basking in the sun while gathering treasure.

Each year we return to refill our larder with these exquisite gems. This year our motley crew consisted of three. Rowdy's first outing in a canoe was a success, no one fell out. Normally we spend many hours trying to push and pull our canoe through the muddy mire until we find spots where the water is deep enough to actually paddle, much like that scene in the movie "African Queen" when they were hopelessly stuck in the marshlands...one of my favorite movies.:) Spiders are everywhere and the stagnate waters can be quite foul smelling on a warm fall day, how I ever talked my wife into searching out this fortune for the first time years ago is beyond me.

Because the water levels were so high this year the going was pretty easy, we did not get stuck once...Rowdy even fell asleep on the trip in.

Behold, the lost treasure of Cranberry Bog Lake!

Real food is our wealth.


All drama aside, freshly picked cranberries can be stored at around 40° for a month or so. We prefer to freeze ours and use them as needed, they will remain good for years in the freezer. When picking cranberries in a bog surrounded by beavers one has to be diligent in washing the berries to avoid "Beaver Fever" or Giardiasis, a nasty infection of the small intestine.

The swamps in this area are surounded by fields of wild rice, we have gathered it in the past but as it was still green this year we left it be for another time.

With the assistance of a third member our party was able to quickly gather enough berries for the entire year.

Jostaberry

I picked and froze the last of our jostaberries the other day, jostaberries being a cross between a black currant and gooseberry. Our oldest bush and the parent plant of numerous others is now around 4-5 years old and starting to produce fairly well. I think we picked almost gallon off it this year. We have many more "starts" ranging from 5 months to 3 years old and are excited at the prospects of reaping ever increasing harvests going forward.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this plant when compared to our gooseberries and currants is that the fruits, in our garden, ripen much later helping us to avoid any problems with currant flys that so often plague the latter two. The flavor can best be described as sweet and tart, I have a feeling we will enjoy using it in various recipes in the future. It is not as tasty as a goosberry but if you take into consideration it's lack of pest issues the flavor gap becomes less noticable. One other thing I like about this particular plant is that the fruits do not fall off everytime the wind blows like our currants tend to do. The berries are firmly attached, almost too firmly.

Gooseberry >


Jostaberry >

A Few Rambling Thoughts on Wild Edible Herbs and Berries

This past weekend we took a drive up into the mountains to see how the huckleberries were progressing this year...not so great. Berries were few and far between possibly due to the lengthy rainy weather this spring affecting their ability to pollinate properly, so we only picked a few to be used fresh this week. Hopefully we will have better luck higher up in the mountains later this summer in a few of our favorite spots. All was not lost though as we quickly switched gears and focused instead on gathering elderberry blossoms and the flowers of St. Johns Wort that were growing wild nearby.

Thanks to a couple of wonderful posts here and here from Diane over at Peaceful Acres we recently and inadvertently discovered that St. John's Wort grows wild all around our area. It can be fairly easily identified via the purplish dots that appear to perforate the leaves and flowers which is where this plant gets it's name Hypericum perforatum. So after reading her posts we are now happily following suite and making our own herbal salve.

We have also been picking and drying clover, violet flowers, chamomile, and even a few huckleberry leaves that we use fresh or dried in various potions and teas.

A light and refreshing sun tea in the works comprised of clover, huckleberry leaves, rose petals, mint, and lemon balm.

Various herbs drying in the greenhouse.

Drying North Idaho tea plant (huckleberry) leaves for winter use.:)

We recently identified this plant as Split-Lip Hemp Nettle (?), a member of the mint family, growing in our area. Not sure what we will be using it for as of yet...might be poisonous.(?)

Honeyberries

I am excited to see that our little honeyberry (edible blue honeysuckle) has finally developed a few fruits for us this season. Honeyberries, with their frost tolerant flowers, are known for their ability to fruit early, a couple weeks before strawberries, and with a little luck they will even produce on 1 year old bushes. Ours has taken quite a few more years than that but then again we have uprooted and moved the poor bushes on several occasions which no doubt has set them back a bit. From what I've read they will produce berries for well over 30 years so I am willing to be patient. Some varieties are supposed to produce anywhere from 3-5 lbs of fruit per bush when fully mature...ours has about 20 berries on it.

The plants require cross pollination so at least one other, preferably more, different and compatible varieties are necessary for fruit set. Although our other bush is very small, produced no flowers to speak of, yet we still have these berries on the larger plant so they are obviously able to self pollinate to some degree as the flowers are (I think) hermaphrodite (having both male and female organs). Life will find a way I suppose. If memory serves me, I believe our bushes are Berry Blue and Blue Belle. There are many varieties and not all are compatible with each other.

I'm excited to start taking cuttings for propagation and hope to have more than a few bushes in the near future. Theoretically, this Siberian honeysuckle should be a perfect addition to our berry patch as they are not at all picky about the type of soil they are grown in and can be hardy from zones 2-8 and -40°F.

So anyway, I hope to become more involved with this particular plant now that it's obvious they will indeed grow and produce for us. I plan on purchasing a few more varieties next spring and also hope to focus on propagating some of my own through cuttings and maybe even seed. The plants are not cheap so I had better start saving my pennies.:)

The berries have a sweet tart flavor that I really like.

Drying Kefir Grains

Some time ago, a good friend of my wife generously shared some of her kefir grains with us. These grains, also called granules, are used to make a healthy fermented milk drink, we have been enjoying this probiotic beverage in the form of morning smoothies ever since. Months ago we performed a little experiment with our grains, drying a small portion for storage. Drying the grains was as simple as straining away the fermented milk and allowing the remaining grains to sit out in a warm dry area for a few days. We then deposited the little treasures into a small muslin bag that was set aside in our cupboard for a couple months.

We recently rehydrated those same grains and after being reactivated in milk were happy to find them as healthy and alive as before. To reactivate, we placed them in a small amount of milk for 12-14 hours, strained and added fresh milk. This cycle was repeated a few times until the grains appeared soft, white, and begin to ferment and thicken the milk allowing us to combine them with our original batch. Kefir can also be frozen or stored in the refrigerator for extended periods of time but we were more interested in seeing how dried kefir would hold up if kept in a muslin bag without any type of refrigeration.

I find these remarkable "living" fermented foods to be quite fascinating. It's somewhat strange to think that only a few years prior I had never even heard of, much less consumed, fermented foods like kimchi, (real) sauerkraut, and kefir that have now become such a standard part of our everyday diet

Freshly strained kefir grains, they look just like cottage cheese


Some of the same grains a few days later drying in a dish on the kitchen counter

Askutasquash

Squash was originally known as askutasquash by the Narragansett Indians, but the Pilgrims, having difficulty pronouncing this word simply called it squash. Either way, it was an extremely valuable source of food for both peoples, and one that we also heavily rely on as a source of nutrition for a large part of the season.

This year's askutasquash grew pretty well for us considering the fact that the plants were not provided with very sunny locations to grow in, mostly due to space constraints. Last night we picked many of our smaller squash from an area of our garden that becomes shady and damp this time of year, not ideal conditions for squash. A couple had blemishes even though we put down boards to help keep them away from the soil. The majority had fully matured and still looked great, so we decided to harvest them while they were still in good condition. Our larger Hubbard, Kabocha, and some of the Spaghetti squash were grown in a different garden and have been left on the vine for a while longer as the plants still look pretty good.

Spaghetti and Kabocha keeping each other company ↓

This vegetable is always harvested by us around mid to late September just before any fall rains or frost can damage the crop. Normally at this time of year the vines have begun to die back and the rind has hardened to the point that it can no longer be easily pierced by our thumbnails. I leave a couple inches of stem on the squash as they perspire through their stems, and any without may begin to rot. Those that lack stems or have soft spots are always used first, and are usually the ones that we steam and freeze to be used as soup or in mashed squash dishes. The squash is then allowed to cure on our porch until the temperature drops below 50° at which point it is brought inside and kept cool and dry, right around 50-60°. Our acorn squash never stores very long for us so we try to use them first, I only grew a few this year because of that.

Large and reliable Blue Hubbard ↓

Over the years I have for the most part grown the same 8-10 types of squash, not really trying too many new varieties. I certainly do have my favorites though; Blue Hubbard, Spaghetti, Sugar Pie pumpkin, and Gold Nugget squash. I can always count on these four to outperform in the garden regardless of the conditions in any given year. That, and they hold up extremely well in storage, some a good 10-11 months. We are often still eating the prior season's perfectly good squash towards the latter part of June.

Cross between a Blue Hubbard and Gold Nugget ↓

Same crossed seeds, slightly different look ↓


We started growing Sugar Pie pumpkins and the little Gold Nugget squash about four years ago and have been very pleased with their productivity, tolerance for bad weather, and ability keep in storage. These have both been wonderful additions to the food garden and are very easy to manage in the kitchen. The little 2-5 pound Gold Nuggets grow on very compact plants making them perfect for tight spaces and have a surprisingly small seed cavity and lots of flesh, an ideal meal for two. We sometimes bake our squash dolled up with spaghetti sauce, herbs, ground cherries, and even a few elderberries (we just picked a gallon of these off our bushes), but more often then not we just grate them raw onto our salads enjoying their natural flavors.


Gold Nuggets growing on a compact plant, these were in a different part of the garden and can wait a bit longer before being harvested. ↓

Splendor, Pigs, and Berries

Last Monday found us escaping the garden for a day spent trekking into the mountains foraging for wild berries. We were lured up to the enchanting Snow Lake, one of our favorite high mountain haunts this time of year. This part of the Selkirk mountains is still remote enough to be officially designated as grizzly bear habitat. We were even able catch a couple of bears on film in this area a couple years back.

The huckleberries were beyond numerous as we spent a couple hours picking the heavily laden bushes around the lake. I think we were out for around seven hours and did not see another living sole not even a bear, what a treat. Sometimes it is nice to feel as if you have the mountains all to yourself.

My wife peeking through a remnant of the Great Burn of 1910 that ravaged much of north Idaho and parts of Montana

Besides all the huckleberries we also found Twinberries, a variety of honeysuckle who's yellow spring flowers are later replaced with a pair of shiny black oblong berries protruding from brilliant red bracts. We find these berries to be very sweet with an almost jelly like texture. Apparently they are deliciously edible if eaten in the mountains of the northern states but have been reported to be very bitter in other areas of the U.S.


We saw a type of Pink Flowering Currant (I think that is what they are called) growing everywhere, we just call them blue currants. They have an enjoyable flavor that is hard to describe, not in any way similar to the a common garden currant.


There were Black Swamp Gooseberries also called Prickly Currants that have shiny dark clusters of hairy berries adorning their thorny stems and are not nearly as pleasing to the palate as the aforementioned berries...actually they are quite disgusting, but nonetheless edible.


The Black Elderberries are also unpleasant when eaten raw but very tasty when added with ground cherries to some of our favorite baked squash dishes. Interestingly enough, when we were at the lake I swear these elderberries looked black, but my pictures reflect an almost maroon colored berry...perhaps they are red elderberries.


Our berry picking adventure was pristine and beautiful, but not devoid of the traces of man. It's too bad that we have to spend precious time filling our packs with the refuse of those who hold no regard for the land...filthy pigs.

My wife picking up after the thoughtless slobs that last occupied this area

The next day we made a wonderful hucklegrape syrup and a surprisingly thick huckleberry jam. For the syrup and jam we used apples for pectin and and a little honey for sugar, they both turned out great...our very first canned fruit preserves. Yay for us!

Healthy, natural, huckleberry jam fresh from the mountains of northern Idaho

The Land of Milk and Honey

Click to enlarge

Can you guess what we had for breakfast? Not our typical morning fare, but it sure was good.

We have been picking Oregon grapes off and on for the last few weeks. The plant is very popular for the medicinal value of it's roots but we are much more interested in the tart seedy fruits. I'm convinced they are extremely healthy but have found little information regarding the berries besides the fact that they are high in antioxidants and vitamin C. Many people use them for preserves or wine but that involves the use of a little too much sugar for my liking, so we freeze and add them to the fruit mixture that makes up our morning smoothies.

A handful of blueberries and huckleberries

A trip to beautiful Upper Priest lake provided us with more huckleberries, blueberries, and a nice hike in the forest. I have not positively identified the blue ones as a form of wild blueberry but they sure don't taste like your average huckleberry...they're very tart. We make special trips to this lake just for this particular berry that I have yet to find growing anywhere else.

At the far end of this picture is a beach that I once camped overnight on, there is a swampy area back in the forest...leeches everywhere. I call it leech beach.