It's Berry Time

Berry picking is a serious enterprise for many Alaskans in the late summer, heading out to their favorite berry patches to pick until their fingers turn pink and purple with wild berry juices. Some folks keep their patches a secret, and some invite their friends and family to share their berry hot spots. Thanks to ongoing stewardship of the land, there are enough berries to go around even without precise coordinates or passed-down family tradition.

Berries are prized in Alaska because they're delicious fresh, frozen, dried, preserved, baked with, and used in a traditional Native Alaskan ice cream called akutaq, a Yup'ik word meaning "mix them together," in this case, seal oil and berries. They're also full of powerful antioxidants, which help protect cells from aging and disease. According to a 2006 University of Alaska study, wild-picked lingonberries have nearly eight and a half times the amount of antioxidants as blueberries cultivated in the Lower 48.

We love berry picking because it's a variation on regular hiking that includes built-in snack breaks. Finding a comfy blueberry bush to sit in or lying in the warm berry-laden tundra and filling a bucket with sweet wild food is as heavenly as it sounds, and one of our favorite summer pastimes.

We bring a few ziplock bags, small buckets, or empty yogurt containers to collect berries and a backpack to store our haul for hands-free hiking in case we take a tumble. We always make sure to look out for bears, who also love the berry patch, and make conversation or sing as we go, so as not to surprise them. There are also poisonous berries in Alaska, most of which are white in color, including the deadly baneberry, so bring an identification book or guide with you to know which types to avoid. Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, the Northwest by Janice Schofield is a favorite of ours.

Common berries to look for in Alaska are:

• Blueberries (high and low bush)

• Raspberries

• Cloudberries

• Lingonberries (or low-bush cranberries)

• Highbush cranberries

• Salmonberries

• Crowberries

• Watermelon Berries

Of course, their names are region-specific, so “salmonberries” in one part of the state might be “cloudberries” in another. Growing up in the Aleutian Islands, “crowberries” were known as“mossberries,” so it’s a berry language you must learn as you go.

We put a lot of berries in the freezer so we can bake with them in the winter. The past few days we have been picking raspberries in our parent’s front yard, freezing them on cookie sheets and then moving them into quart size ziplocks to make scones and muffins, pancakes or smoothies once berry season is sadly over.

Here’s our go-to Super Berry Muffin Recipe from our cookbook, The Salmon Sisters: Harvest & Heritage (scroll down). They are full of good-for-you ingredients, flexible on whatever fresh or frozen berries you have, and make the perfect morning or on-the-go snack. Wishing you a berry happy mid-August. Get out there and fill your berry buckets!

In more berry news, we are loving these beautiful High Bush Blueberry Earrings that Libby Ferrara of Stray Goose Studio made for our summer shops. Also these Wild Berry Enamel Camp Cups by Skogsbarn and this season’s Salmon Sisters favorite, the women’s Salmonberry Tee.

And if you have kids and are not reading Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey, Jamberry by Bruce Degen and Berry Song by Michaela Goade on repeat, this is your time :)