Juicy Juneberries

July 14, 2009

Lyle and I went berry picking today and it was a berry that I have never heard of -- JUNEBERRIES. A friend stopped by last night at the house and talked about how he had picked two gallons of juneberries. Lyle said, “That’s something George and I have to do.”

The preparation was almost as intricate as the berry-picking trip itself. We loaded up the Honda ATV into the cargo trailer. We gathered buckets and lengths of line to tie the buckets to our belts. Lyle, age 70, gave me a berry picking lesson on how to get the berries from the tree to the bucket.

Juneberries are delicious, reminding me of blue berries. Lyle ate almost as many as he placed in the bucket. We found a place to park the truck and trailer about half way between Velva and Minot ND. We were on high ground and could see for miles overlooking the Mouse River Valley. We jumped on the ATV and went from thicket to thicket on the right of way. Some of the thickets were already picked; the locals and the birds love to go after their juneberries. We ended up with a half gallon in two hours of picking.

The Juneberry (Amelanchier spp. Nutt) is a member of the rose family along with the apple, pear and raspberry. Other common names given the fruit include serviceberry, sarvisberry, mountain Juneberry, western shadbush and Rocky Mountain blueberry.

The bush grows as high as 18 feet and bears masses of white snowy flowers in spring. The fruit is borne in clusters of six to 12 and ripens to purple, red or black. Some cultivars have cream-colored fruit. Size of wild berries ranges from 1/4 to 3/8 inches in diameter. Some cultivated bushes have fruit up to 5/8 inches in diameter.

The berries can be eaten fresh or used for wine, home canning, pies, jams and fruit rolls. The plants make attractive ornamental bushes and are also used for wildlife plantings and windbreaks. As for me, I had fresh juneberries on my cereal every day for a week.