Well it was this fall anyway, since I didn’t have this blog then we will just have to pretend.

I LOVE harvesting, gathering, foraging, whatever you want to call picking random stuff out in nature I love it! Mean it mark, like my sister would say. Actually I love picking stuff I or someone else has picked as well, but there is something amazing about picking stuff mother nature grew, specially when it’s someone almost no one picks.

Sadly in this case LOTS of people now pick high and low bush blueberries (bilberries) in my mountains. I mean a fuck ton of people go up there, the news will announce when they are ready! I miss the days when fewer people lived here and we were less popular. Hey! You kids get off my lawn!! LOL Lots of people mean the state has changed quite a lot and tons of people live here that frankly have no interest in this state. Honestly I’m perfectly fine with people doing the exact thing I’m doing, but I do take issue with people being jerks and over picking it to the point where it’s hard to find a quart baggy full. I don’t mean a couple of gallons, that’s just personal use, I mean once we asked someone in the pass how the berries were looking and they said that they had just finished picking ten 10 gallon buckets and were no going up to pick from themselves, and no I didn’t make a mistake with the double tens. That’s just rude. If I had to guess they were either making and selling something like jelly, or selling them to one of the breweries or something. I’d even be cool with that if they weren’t picking in the one place everyone else picks, if you are going commercial, take the time to find a less picked area.

Okay, I’m done preaching for the moment. I acknowledge I’m complaining about people doing exactly what I’m doing, exactly where I’m doing it! Maybe that shows how much I love doing it that it angers me when I can’t find any. But look at that smile, I am so freaking happy to have purple dyed hands from picking berries. Every year I schlep my handicapped ass up the mountainside, sometimes with K and try to find enough berries to make it all worth while. This year I precariously climbed up a too steep for me side of the mountain road, alone like an idiot, and found an area where it was clear no one had been picking anything. Sadly because it was so weirdly hot and dry this year and I got up there kind of late and most of the regular blueberries had fallen up. I sat and picked for hours, passed by almost no cars because it was a weekday, and loved every moment of being in one of the places I love the most doing one of the things I love the most. It was beautiful and mostly quiet and only slightly raining, which for berry picking is saying something. Then I topped it off by coasting down the mountain in my manual car that I had known how to drive for not even a year yet. It was a nearly completely perfect day. Actually I just realized that the middle of the three location shots was from the previous week, same mountain, different location, not nearly as perfect.

Most years I force my husband, who doesn’t like doing it as much as I do, to come up with me, but this year was just utter crap for that so I did lots of picking on my own. I picked blueberry/bilberries, crabapples, regular apples and various types of currents by myself this year. When I was picking currents (also picked to late) I spent probably 45 minutes or so talking with a… Mennonite I think, lady who wanted to know what I was picking. I know she wasn’t russian orthodox because I know their look, so I’m guessing. I explained what I was picking, where, and what I do with them. Then I told her what to look for and when, up in the mountain, I liked her. I actually get stopped fairly frequently by people wanting to know what I was picking, even in AK I guess it’s weird to see someone picking something on the side of the road.

Seriously people, there is a TON of amazingly tasty stuff out there free, hell I wish I’d known as a kid I could find crap to eat just out there. Well, other than berries I just picked and ate not knowing what they were. Yep, kids are dumb sometimes. I mean I found a crab apple that I love so much that if it was a full sized apple it would be my all time favorite! I wouldn’t have found it if I didn’t randomly try crab-apples. John Downie crabs make the most amazing applesauce and every year I look forward to them. Pan fried fresh fiddle-heads taste like steak. No. fucking. shit. Pineapple weed and crowberry flower simple syrup is amazing. Seriously, find a local book/blog/extension and get out there, you won’t regret it.