Berry berry!

I found some huckleberries on the forest service at mom's so we headed back and got probably a pint in forty five minutes. But there were some really big nice ripe ones, practically grapes I tell you!! Then we headed to Mumsy's raspberry patch to see if they were ready and in the same forty five minutes we got about 3 quarts, so roughly six times as much in the same time. So a good evening all in all. We had a nice picnic there too.

Little Worker

Clyde getting ready to irrigate and holding the first batch of jam from this summer, huckleberry strawberry. He's a good little helper and worker these days. He even calls his play work and it usually involves a lot of digging.

Mountain Life...

We were scouting out huckleberries yesterday and we can see they're in bud and the bushes look like they're doing pretty well. Can only cross our fingers now. With the mountains still snowy it's really beautiful here. That mountain photo is of Jughandle Mountain from the Stringer Place.

One of my favorite things about this house is my grandma's stove. We cook breakfast on it pretty often and it's our main source of heat during the day. We use the big fireplace at night. Today it's really raining but it looks like it's passing over and we might get some sun this afternoon. The grass is really starting to grow now that it's warming up.

The Smiths -- Take I

We invited our Ben's family up for the huckleberry harvest. Kristen's family came and we conquered... Here are the "fruit" of our labors.....

Here's the report card:

Kristen A+ -- great picker
Laura A- -- good picker but distracted by children
Ben A+ at helping fix flats, no time to pick :(
Dave B for picking and A for fixing flats
Rachel B+ -- good picker but I think she ate some :)
Nathan D+ -- great picker but none make it to the bucket

Everyone else... E for effort


In addition to berry picking, we had our first campfire of the season and spent an afternoon at the beach. It was a busy 24 hours. Rachel stayed with us an entire week. Clyde and Alice really enjoyed having a "big sister" for the week (and I loved having such a helpful visitor). Here are some pictures from our cookout:

Had to show the berries again! We made them into jam, mixed with strawberry and raspberry. It's great! We made about 30 jars.

Here are Rachel, Clyde, Kristen and Elena getting ready to hunt for berries by the bone pile.

Mmmm....

Yesterday Ben took the kids over by the Tamarack Falls Store and got our first huckleberries! Not many are ripe yet, but we are so excited for the season to start!

The Last Huckleberries

It's cooling down in the mountains. We took a road trip over Lick Creek Summit down the Secesh River to the Salmon River to Warm Lake and back home. It's a beautiful drive if you're ever in the McCall area and have some time.

But the best thing happened, we found more huckleberries!!! It was September 6th and they were totally done in the valley for weeks, but we got high enough that they were perfect. And, as Clyde would say, there were "So many!!!" Clyde always asks for so many of everything. Not more or a lot, but so many.

And, they were gigantic! For those of you not familiar with huckleberries, these were probably double the size we're used to:

Luckily, the Smiths were planning on coming the next day (Labor Day) so we took them up to the same place. Some berries had succumbed to the frosty night, but there were enough they got about a pint and a half to take home. And we had huckleberry pancakes for dinner, mmmmm.

Here's some of the other cool scenery we saw on the drive:

Cool dead tree.

Fungus growing on burnt tree.

Tree growing out of a rock.

Mossy tree.

Berry Sad News, But a Berry Good Summer

The huckleberries are done. It was so sad to see only one or two with the rest withering on the bush. I suppose that we can get by until next year. At least we have some jam to tide us over. Lucky for us, Mumsy's raspberries started right when the huckleberries quit, so our summer of berries continues. Mom thinks that we've made about 4 gallons of jam this summer, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that it was about 40 jars of the stuff. We hope that next summer some of you will join us for huckleberry picking and jam making. Mark off your calendars for somewhere from late July to mid-August!

Strawberry/huckleberry jam we made with Aunt Libby:

Libby and Ben's huckleberry haul:

Clyde, a good picker and a good eater... these are Mumsy's raspberries:

It's all about the berries...

Today we went to Mumsy's and we picked huckleberries. The other day I went to the bone pile and picked huckleberries. Mommy and Daddy went rafting on the river and brought home huckleberries. I went to see my cousins at Warm Lake and picked huckleberries. Then we went there again and picked huckleberries. Tomorrow we're going to go pick huckleberries with Aunt Libby.

Today I saw so many huckleberries and I picked so many huckleberries but then there was only one in my bucket. Mommy said the rest were in my tummy. I like to pick huckleberries!

Mommy has tried twice now to show you pretty berry pictures and of course pictures of me, but something is not working.... more again soon!