Day 163- September 3- The Berries

I was out for a ride and wanted to take some pictures of town. To get to the perfect photo spot I had to walk off the road, leaping over streams and across rocks. I got to one spot that had so many berries that despite my very careful treading I couldn't avoid them, there was SO many. I usually don't have much patient for berry picking since it frequently includes suffering many fly bites, but the berries were so plentiful that I might have been able to fill a juice jug in 10 minutes flat. Instead I taste tested, and they were really, really good!

Berry picking is the activity of choice during this time of year. Everywhere you go off the beaten path, you will see women, in bog coats, bent over the land. Students and teachers also enjoy going out on especially hyperactive afternoons of school. There are three popular types of berries around September. Aqpiks or cloudberries are also popular but tend to be picked earlier than we get back from our summer holidays, so we typically miss out on them. Blue, black and red berries are the popular berries of choice for this time of year. In actual fact, the red berries still need a week or two more to turn deep red on their undersides, but they are close. Blueberries are perfect right now, and depending on where you go the flavour and size of them differs a little bit. The ones where I was were huge, juicy and slightly tart. Blackberries are one of the easiest to pick. In baked good they taste much like other berries and are quite nice. To eat, it's a bit of a different story. They have a burst of watery juice and a little sand-like seed inside that is not too nice. The kids however have a wonderful technique of collecting them in a ziploc and then squashing them and drinking the tasty juice out of the corner of the bag so the more nasty skin and seeds don't get in your way.













Theme Song for today: Firecracker by Frazey Ford