Blueberry Bulletin

When that whole made season comes around . . .

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention. I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. I need all of you, to stop what you're doing and listen. . . . 

Ripe blueberries!

Considering how very early the ice went out this spring, I wasn't exactly surprised to learn a couple weekends ago that people were already finding ripe blueberries on the trails around these parts. But just because I wasn't surprised doesn't mean that it isn't crazy early for there to be ripe blueberries in northern Minnesota. Usually I figure on picking my first quart or two of blueberries around July 20.

If you're a long time reader of this blog, you know in the past years I've moved up the ranks as a berry-picking fanatic blueberry picker. You know you're a true berry picker when you measure your berries in gallons rather than cups, pints, or quarts. Over the last two summers, I've picked approximately 7 gallons of berries each year.

Honestly, I'm not feeling quite up to the challenge this year. Seven gallons of berries a year is a lot, you guys and I'm struggling to wrap my head around the idea that berry season is already upon us. (Is it just me or did June absolutely whooooosh by?!)

Maybe it's because I know the picking will likely be the hardest it's been in years. Between the super early/really dry spring, followed by a gully-washing start to the summer, the poor berry bushes don't know which end's up. As a result, the fruit set is spotty this year. While I'm sure there are plenty of patches loaded with berries, I'll have to scramble up granite cliff faces and over pokey, burnt trees to access them. Just thinking about it makes me feel a little tired. *yawn*

Granted, we hardly need 7 gallons of blueberries. We still have about a cup of frozen berries in the freezer, plenty of dried berries to zip up oatmeal and granola bars, and one quart jar of pie filling left over from last year. Of the 7 gallons I picked last year, a good 2.5+ gallons were given out to family members and friends.

After all, this is supposed to be fun, a pleasant pastime if you will. But in the past few summers, I've attacked the berry patches with such aggressive determination that it's started to feel like summer labor.  So this year, I think I'll take it easy when it comes to berry picking. I'll do it as long as I'm having fun. I'll be less motivated by quantity.

That said, something tells me I'll lose my current berry picking ennui once the humidity cracks and temperatures dip below the low 90s and high 80s.

Watch berries, here I come!

 

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The Joy of Putting Up

No, not the joy of putting out. . .That would take us in a completely different direction. A direction I dare say Of Woods and Words has never been before.

Nope, today is much more Laura Ingalls Wilder than it is Carrie Bradshaw. Honestly, I've always been more Laura than Carrie, although I did spend many of my young adult years assuming my future held many a cosmopolitan and several pairs of expensive heels. While not exactly how things ended up, I'm also happy to report that my future (thus far) has not contained a single covered wagon. So that's a relief.

Ever since reading Little House in the Big Woods, I've been fascinated with the idea of self-sufficiency. Through the years, that fascination has taken me down many a twisted path. Thankfully, my long suffering mother patiently let me use up her entire stash of yarn for my knitting attempts, didn't fuss too much when my attempt to dry juneberries in the oven resulted in cookie pans that are still scarred, let me use her canner to make some not so great chokecherry jelly and apple butter. She didn't say a word when I decided to use the garden's red clay to make "bowls."

Now that I'm all grown up, my self-sufficiency attempts are a little less haphazard. And now that I have a garden of my own, my putting up habits have to become a little more focused. Letting any bit of that fresh produce that we've been working to cultivate since late March go to waste would just be a waste. (Yep, pretty swift this morning, eh?) At the very time the blueberries are peaking, I also have zucchinis coming out of my ears and the grocery produce (cherries, stone fruit, etc.) is at its most luscious. I'm trying my best to get it all "put up" for the winter months.

Here are the fruits of my labors so far: a batch blueberry jam, a batch of blueberry raspberry jam, a batch of blueberry vinegar, and a jar of cherry bounce. I also dried a quart of blueberries last night to be used in granola throughout the year.

Last weekend, I finally developed a salsa recipe that's to both of our liking and I'll put that recipe to good use if I can save our tomatoes from the blasted bottom blossom rot. Don't rot on me now little tomatoes!

There are also currently four massive zucchini/summer squash in the fridge that must be dealt with. I think I'll trying dehydrating a couple and will probably make a double batch of zucchini muffins for the freezer.

It all seems very old fashioned, but there's a joy in taking what you gathered and grew and transforming it into something that will feed you for months to come. I love seeing the jars lining up on the shelf, the bags stuffed with frozen blueberries and other foods stacking up in the chest freezer. It makes the sunburned neck and scrapped up shins well worth it.

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We Be Jammin'

No doubt, you've surmised that it's berry season here at Of Woods and Words. Or, as I like to call it . . . "the most wonderful time of the year."Nearly every evening for the last week, I've headed out with my berry picking bucket (aka, a lidded Tupperware container) and have been steadily amassing berries. With two gallons of berries in the freezer, one pie made, and a batch of blueberry vinegar steeping away in the corner, it was time to focus berry picking efforts on restocking the jam pantry.   

Although there are berries galore in the woods, this year, as my scrapped-up shins can attest to, you have to work a little harder to get them. Last year the berries seemed to favor easily accessible open fields. This year, they've tucked themselves away at the top of granite cliffs and in crevices. They're as big and juicy as ever, but sometimes I feel like I could use shin guards. . . or climbing gear. It's been handy to have various watercraft at our disposal to use in this year's berry picking adventures. This is probably just classic, "the grass is always greener on the other side" but I swear the biggest, best berries live down the lake, where you have to paddle or motor to them.   

We took out the canoe on a nearby creek on Tuesday. We found a sandy beach, a ton of berries (and people . . . ah, wilderness!), and towards the end of our time out, we meandered down the river until we reached some rapids. We forded the river, which forms the border between the U.S. and Canada, and found the mother load of berries. With no container on me other than my camera case, I quickly filled up the case with big Canadian blueberries in about five minutes. Best use of my remote area border crossing pass ever.

This past Christmas, I received not one, but two water bath canners. (One got returned . . . there may be no such thing as too many blueberries, but there is such a thing as one too many water bath canners.) I'm feel blessed to have so many people who encourage my berry-picking obsession and on Tuesday evening I got to test out the canner for the first time. There were some nasty smells for a while as the water heated up and the canner burned off some paint/finish fumes.

But in the end, it did a great job of transforming this:

Into this:

Five pints of blueberry/raspberry jam.

Last night, I put up another three pints of straight-up blueberry jam. I've become enamored with the blog "Food in Jars" which could mean very good things for our winter pantry and very bad things for my social life/writing life/anything but domestic goddess life. More canning adventures to come soon!

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Like Fishing, Like Life

I’ve heard it said that there are two great metaphors for life: a river and a garden. Last night I decided there might be a third great metaphor for life: fishing.

You know, you make sure you have everything ready, you hope everything works, and then you head off, knowing that anytime, your motor may fail, forcing you to paddle back to shore. Once you’re out on the water, you throw in your line, bob around a bit, and wait for something to come to you. Maybe not a metaphor for the most proactive of lives, but a slice of life, nonetheless.

We weren’t the most patient fishermen last night. We caught a lot more snags than we caught fish (okay, so there wasn’t even a nibble), which was fine by me. After a busy and sticky hot day at work, I was happy just to be floating about in a boat, enjoying the light breeze and the cooler evening temperatures.

After the relaxing time in the middle of the lake, we came back home, where I made popcorn over the stove and managed to get a potholder on fire. Nothing like starting off days off with a bang. The popcorn was really good though, and the flaming potholder was immediately flung into a basin of dishwater.

Today’s my first day off in eight days (I realize that since I work increasingly as a freelancer, days off are a highly arbitrary concept) and while that fact doesn’t exactly signal “the end of the world,” I’m looking forward to not spending the next two days at work, per se. There are blueberries to pick, a commentary or two to write, some fishing, and a baby loon in the bay to watch grow up.

It’s heating up to be another scorcher outside. Better add swimming to the agenda.

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What's New?! (Wordless Wednesday)

The only thing busier than humans in northern Minnesota in the summer? Everything else!

Blueberries as of last Friday.

Little tomatoes and peppers in the garden.

A piliated woodpecker

Look the dock fixed itself! (Thanks Andy.)

More later . . .

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Canning Roughing It

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve become a pretty persistent wild strawberry picker. I wouldn’t normally devote much time to picking these teeny little berries that are usually few and far apart, but this summer I’ve found a couple fruitful strawberry patches where the fruit is fairly concentrated and the berries are bigger than I’ve ever seen a wild strawberry before: about the size of a Gobstopper. On an average evening of picking, I come home with about a cup of berries. Still, picking wild strawberries involves a fair amount of ditch diving – that is, squatting along the side of gravel roads, pawing through strawberry foliage – before you’ve gathered enough berries to amount to anything.

I read a local cookbook this spring that put the crazy idea of making wild strawberry jam into my head and I’ve been diligently gathering strawberries to make a batch. Then, at some point this week, the magic berry switch must have been flicked. Suddenly ripe raspberries and blueberries are popping up all over to join the strawberries. By Friday it was becoming apparent that it was time to finish up with the my putzy wild strawberry jam project so I could devote my full attention to the raspberries and blueberries (aka, the big guns).

Yes, I realize that making wild strawberry jam sounds pretty idealistic when you live in a cabin in the woods. Since today I headed into town to use my mother’s canning equipment to make my strawberry jam, I thought I’d share how you too can make strawberry jam.

Step 1) Pick as many wild strawberries as you possibly can. This is a project to spread out over several days as you’ll probably spend more time searching for berries than actually picking. (I froze my berries while I waited to accumulate enough for jam.)

Step 2) Once you've got a big bag full, mash up all your wild strawberries and see what it amounts to. (As of last night I had a 3 ½ cups of mashed wild strawberries. I needed 5 cups for a batch of cooked strawberry jam.)

Step 3) Go to the grocery store and buy a couple pints of strawberries. After all, you have a full time job and a grand opening at work in a week. And if you keep squatting on the side of the road with a berry basket, soon or later, you’ll get hit. And are you really sure you haven’t been picking berries on private property?!

Step 4) Cook your jam according to the Sure-Jell package directions.

Step 5) Admire your rows of jam.

So maybe not totally “Little House in the Big Woods” style, but still, homemade jam is homemade jam, even if my wild strawberry jam is slightly domesticated.

Don’t worry, I do have some standards. After I finished up with the strawberry jam this afternoon, I chopped up all the homegrown rhubarb that’s been hanging out in our fridge to make a batch of rhubarb marmalade.

Of course, the secret ingredient to make rhubarb marmalade set is Strawberry Jell-O.

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Bears, Berries, and Busy-ness

After a couple weeks of unseasonably warm weather in May, things took a turn for the chilly this June. A turn for the chilly and rainy. Considering the high fire danger we all worried ourselves sick about in May, we’re not about to wish away our current lot of somewhat gloomy weather. Still it can make things a little uncomfortable when you work in a stone building --I always wanted to know what it would be like to live in a castle! --and you try to walk to work everyday.

On Tuesday, I walked to work. About 1 in the afternoon, the rain started to really come down. I figured I’d wait it out: I had plenty of work to keep me busy before I had to make the 25 minute walk home. About 4 in the afternoon, I was wrapping the day’s projects. Outside, the rain still came down: cats and dogs. So I called Andy when he got home from work and had him pick me up.

Yesterday, a bit of drizzle fell down, but not so much rain to deter me walking home. So I was a little confused when Andy drove up as I was starting out towards home.

“Did want you to have to walk past the bear,” he said.

Just down the road, a bear had gotten in some garbage or bird feeder on a neighbor’s porch and the rest of the neighbors were scrambling to get their garbage tucked away before the bear could make a mess of it. This morning, when Andy drove to work, he say two full grown bears were on the same neighbor’s porch. I have yet to lay eyes on the bears, but other neighbors say there’s a cub in the area as well.

You’d think the bears would be forsaking their garbage smorgasbord for the berries that are starting to ripen in the woods. I’ve been meaning to head out with a little cup to gather some of the strawberries that peeping their red faces out from foliage along the roadside. But things like installing the gift shop at work have taken precedent.

As we get closer and closer the museum grand opening, an increasing sense of urgency has infused everything. But there’s something satisfying about getting everything in order, even if installing a gift shop means a lot of data entry and learning a new computer system. (Yesterday Andy and I had so much fun playing around with the museum’s point of sale system in practice mode that I fear he’ll eventually talk me into the small business owner’s life that I am so steadfastly against) Today, we got about halfway through pricing and entering the items, tomorrow I will get some work done by myself, and on Sunday we will make the final push to get everything in order.

It’s times like this when days off just are opportunities to get other work done when you most appreciate a cup of herbal tea (is it bad that I now paw manically through the tea selection looking for the tea labeled “meditative time”?) and a good book. I’ve about 2/3s of the way through Olive Kitterage and really enjoying it, although my mother warns me it “doesn’t all come together like you think it should.”

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