There is no shortage of huckleberry products out there: I have encountered huckleberry candy and huckleberry barbecue sauce, and last week I drank some huckleberry tea. They’re all disappointing. Nothing matches the taste of an actual, freshly picked huckleberry. These tiny blue-black orbs take forever to ripen, but they have a unique tangy-sweet flavor that makes them perfect for pies and other pastries. Huckleberry season is a time of day-long expeditions into the brush, of secret spots on hillsides where there’s just the right amount of sunshine to bring the fruit to fruition, of dodging poison oak and the occasional close encounter with a bear competing for our common prize. It’s a time when whole families gather around the day’s harvest — not to eat, but to begin the monotonous process of removing the tiny stems and leaves. Maybe it’s the sheer hard work that goes into harvesting huckleberries that makes them so delicious.
Through centuries of pop culture, the word “huckleberry” has been synonymous with a certain type of American character: wild and unrefined yet undeniably charming. Think Huckleberry Finn or Huckleberry Hound. Huckleberries are hicks. But they’re the kind of hicks you want to have as neighbors. And they are everywhere! Nothing seems to grow as prolifically as huckleberry brush. It’s some of the first vegetation to show up after an area’s been burned, and it specializes in growing on steep hillsides that force you to perform yoga poses when you pick.
Huckleberry brush is no treat to wade through, either. Its branches are stiff and wiry and stubborn — they both whip against your arms and tangle up your feet. Ticks are omnipresent. You return home scratched and sunburnt and with what is often a paltry prize for your efforts.
I was both intrigued and skeptical, therefore, when presented with a fancy “huckleberry harvester.” The device is plastic and metal, with looped tines resembling a bear’s claw, and a scoop underneath. While the idea of scooping up berries rather than pinching them one by one from the bush was exciting, I had little doubt that it would increase the amount of leaves and debris in the harvest. I took the harvester out to Manila, where bushes line the path between the gun range and the Ma-le’l Dunes area.
Coastal berries are larger and ripen earlier in the year, but they are also rather mealy and lack the inimitable tanginess of their inland cousins. For novice pickers, it should be noted that huckleberries in Humboldt often grow alongside twinberries, also known as bearberry honeysuckle. Huckleberries have deep green, waxy leaves while twinberries’ leaves are lighter, resembling those of a raspberry. Huckleberries are delicious. Twinberries are poisonous. If you’re not sure — don’t pick it!
To my great surprise, the harvester was a success! The claw slid neatly along the branches of the bush and popped the berries off one by one, leaving most of the leaves. Within in an hour I had come close to filling my little plastic container. Granted, the harvester didn’t distinguish from the ripe, the almost ripe and the green, and there were still plenty of leaves and pine needles in my bounty, but I was impressed! I took the huckleberries back to my friends’ house where (after rinsing them) I proudly offered them up for dessert. They were a little dismayed at having to pick out the leaves themselves, but what do you want? This hick has better things to do.
Huckleberry-Apple Pie
My mother’s famous huckleberry-apple pie once earned $75 at an auction. It was worth every dollar. I risk temporary estrangement sharing her recipe, even though she’s confident that nobody can replicate her results. King or Golden Delicious Apples are a good place to start, and be sure to let the syrup soak into the apples before you cook the pie. And I’ve just lost out on Christmas presents for the next five years.
Ingredients and method:
Prepare pastry for a double crust pie and place the bottom crust in a pie pan.
1 quart apples, peeled and sliced
1 pint huckleberries
1 1/2 to 2 cups sugar
1/4 cup tapioca
1/3 stick of butter
Mix the fruit, sugar and tapioca in a bowl. Pour the filling into the unbaked piecrust, dot it with butter and cover it with the top crust. Bake the pie at about 375 F (Mom uses a wood stove) until the juice starts bubbling through the holes of the upper crust, about 20 minutes.
This article appears in Dead and Disconnected.
Nom!
You don’t have to pick out the stems and leaves if you pick JUST the fruit off the plant. I’m not a botanist but I think if you always remove the fine tendril branches when picking fruit the plant has to focus energy and resources to replace the leaves instead of just growing more fruit. Also then you pick a bunch of inedible green huckleberries as well as seen in your photo. I pick them by holding a large hat underneath the bunches and just quickly pick the berries 2-4 at a time and they just fall right in.
I have successfully picked huckleberries for over 35 years. My biggest haul was the year I picked 48 quarts of cleaned berries over several weeks. This establishes my credentials as a successful berry picker. Your method of picking is a) damaging to the plant, and b) disrespectful of pickers who come after you. A FAR FRIENDLIER method of picking that is quite efficient is to “milk” the berries. You place a wide mouthed bucket underneath the branch you are picking, and hold onto that branch with the same hand you are using to hold the bucket. For right handed me, that’s holding the bucket and branch with my left hand. Then, with your other hand (my right) place your palm under the branch, reach your fingers up, and gently massage the berries that are there. The ones that are ripe will fall into your hand, or just past your hand, and into the bucket. Yes, you will get a few leaves, some bugs, and some debris, along with a few green berries, but NOTHING like the process you describe. It is helpful to have a closed container with you, too, so that when you get over a quart of berries in your bucket, you can transfer them, and seal it up, and keep picking.
HOW TO CLEAN– There are tricks for cleaning them that make that process much easier as well. First of all, salad spinners are a fabulous tool, but any strainer that fits inside of a large container will work. Place the berries into the strainer/spinner, and fill the container with water. The white berries (which contain a virus in common with blue berries, and should be carefully disposed of so as not to spread the virus, like the birds do) float, the leaves float, some of the bugs float. Skim them off. Throw them away. Lift the strainer up, dump the water, start over. Do this enough times that you no longer get debris, and are faced with a mass of clean purple berries and some green ones. You can either scoop them by the handful and sort, or take a cookie sheet, and put handfuls out, pull out the green ones, etc. This works, and works well. I am no longer the premier picker in my family, having aged out of that title, which now goes to my 6’3″ son who can reach more berries, and has greater stamina than I now have. Have fun picking, and please don’t promote practices that are damaging to this wonderful plant!