The highlight of this week was (not surprisingly) avoiding work. Yesterday afternoon, we took a few hours off and went out huckleberry picking at a friend’s house. Their property is extremely remote and makes our place in the trees look like suburbia by comparison. You have to really, really want to get up there.
However, we braved the road and had lots of fun picking berries. We have a LOT of huckles now. I’ve got two 4 cup containers in the refrigerator and 4 big ziplock baggies in the freezer all bursting with huckleberry goodness. We’re guessing that all told, it’s about 1.5 gallons of berries. That’s sure a nice reward for a couple hours of enjoying the outdoors.
To help ward off bears, we took our black dog Leia with us. We also all wore jingle bells. I dissected an old Christmas ornament I got at a dollar store, and even Leia had a bell, so she could jingle her way through the forest. And yes, while I was making the little bell necklaces for us, I did think of the old Far Side cartoon with bears jingling after munching unsuspecting hikers.
However, we lived to tell the tale and made it back down the hill. Returning to work afterward was somewhat of a challenge. Methinks I’ll be making huckleberry jam, or pie, or muffins this weekend. Mmm….