Huckleberries!

If you ever go to Montana, you'll find all the gifts in the tourist shops are huckleberry related.  Huckleberries are a species in the same genus as blueberries (Vaccinium).  It is common in Montana to go to the mountains in late summer to pick these berries.  This Sunday, we drove far out into the National Forest to pick some.

 

We went to our usual spot.  The plants flourish after a wildland fire, and the area we go to burned back in the early 2000's.  The forest has started to mature, so the huckleberry bushes are no longer as full of berries as they were years ago.  But, we were happy to see that the berries were ripe.

We started picking the berries.  When you find a good patch of fruit, you can just sit down and pick for 10 or 15 minutes.  It can be slow going; the berries grow under the leaves and can be difficult to find.  After a couple of hours, we accumulated enough to make some jam this fall.

When we got home, we cleaned the berries and froze them for use in the fall.  But, we made sure to save some to have with our homemade vanilla ice cream!