It’s open season on saskatoons!
As some of you may know, I am teaching an Entrepreneurship course out on Reserve in Maskwacis (formerly Hobbema, Alberta) for the month of July. I have six lovely students that I absolutely enjoy teaching but there’s nowhere convenient to stay on reserve, so for Monday to Friday I had to find lodging at an Airbnb out in the country. I really needed a nice and quiet place where I could enjoy some nature but also have a comfortable place to do prep work at the end of the school day (which is NOT the end of a teacher’s day!)
I must say that being out here is absolutely relaxing. Every night, I can go walking on the country roads to watch the birds, the muskrats, and the sunset. I even went out one night while a giant storm was rolling in and took some pictures. [Editor’s note:] Country ‘quiet’ and city ‘quiet’ ain’t quite the same, eh? Did she mention she couldn’t get the article done because of a heat warning, storm warning, tornado warning, and a hail warning IN ONE WEEK?!! What’s next, flying toad warnings?? [JMC]
As I’d been driving back-and-forth on these country roads for almost a month I had already seen a sign for Hillberry Farms every day, but today as I was coming back to my country abode, I saw for the first time a big giant sign that said “U-pick open!”, too. Of course, I had to go see. When I pulled up, I was greeted right away by Dave, the owner of the farm. And he let me know that it was actually just their third day being open for the public to come and pick saskatoons. Because we’ve been in a nasty heat wave though, this was the first day that they’d been busy and Yay! the weather was perfect: not too hot and with a nice breeze. He told me which rows were the best ones to go to and then handed me a red bucket, and so I set out.
Being out in their rows of saskatoon bushes was a little magical, like being in a perfect painting of a perfect farm. The birds were chirping and skittering around through the bushes, the wind was blowing, and in the distance you could hear the faint whoosh from the highway. As I was walking along towards the back of one of the rows of saskatoons I was blown away by how heavy all the bushes are under the loads of those beautiful powdery saskatoons ready for the picking. Once I filled my bucket and headed back to pay for my bounty, I got to talking to Dave about the farm.
The farm has actually been in Dave’s family since 1898 when his ancestors came here to homestead the land, but they didn’t start the farm off as a berry farm as of course they would have started with wheat. Then, when Dave’s father passed it to Dave and his wife Deb around 27 years ago, they planted the saskatoon bushes. That means some of the bushes are around 20 years old and some of them are actually older than 20 years old. I asked him what happens to all the berries if they don’t get picked by me? He said they go through every morning with the picker and they’ll pick a few hundred pounds. Depending on which gear the picker is in, will determine what the yield is for that particular day. He said on Monday morning (2 days ago) he was able to harvest 300 pounds and it took 40 minutes. But yesterday he was able to get 300 pounds and it only took 20 minutes. That’s a lot of berries! Most interestingly, they have three cultivars of saskatoons on the farm, Northline, Smoky, and Honeywood. I asked Dave what the difference between each type was, and he answered with a resounding and emphatic: flavour!!!
If you’re wondering a bit about saskatoon berries because you’ve never heard of them before - I guess I should introduce these beauties which can be mistaken for blueberries at first. On closer inspection, they are definitely more purpley with a reddish flesh and the smaller ones you notice the seeds a lot more if you’re eating them straight up. They are indigenous to Canada and there are some northern parts of the United States where you might find them, but they're definitely most prevalent in Alberta and Saskatchewan. There’s about 20 different cultivars of saskatoon berries with the three I already listed being the most common of all the varieties. Oh, and I learned that saskatoon berries belong to the Rosaceae family, making them relatives of apples, almonds, and roses!!
As I was talking to Dave a woman came up with her two buckets full and they looked different than the berries I had just picked; they were definitely smaller. She let us know that she had picked some of the Smoky variety. I asked her what she likes to do with them and she smiled and said she just freezes them and eats them by the handful from the freezer. She said doing any kind of pastry with them is a waste! Lol, now that’s a woman that knows exactly how she likes her berries. She asked Dave how long they would have the U-pick open because she was planning on coming back and getting a couple more buckets. It’s important to know the season for picking saskatoon berries is actually quite short and the bushes are so heavy with the fruit right now that I imagine it won’t be long before the birds come by for some free meals as well!
After the woman left, Dave took me over to try the Smoky cultivar of the saskatoon berry. And I could not believe it! They actually tasted just like grapes - very sweet but in a much smaller berry versus what I had picked (the Northline cultivar) which have a more distinctive flavour with a hint of spice and floral plus they’re so plump and juicy. He then described the Honeywood cultivar, the third type on the property, as tasting just like honey. The Smoky and the Honeywood were not quite ready yet. You could pick them, he said, but you had to be a bit more discerning because unlike with the Northline ones where you could just grab handfuls off the bush at one time with the other two cultivars you actually would need to go through and pick the individual berries one by one or risk tearing the skins on them. Another few days though and Dave said they would be big enough and more of them ripe and ready to go.
Fun fact: In Cree culture saskatoon berries are misâskwatômin and their syllabic spelling is ᒥᓵᐢᑲᐧᑑᒥᐣ. As I’m teaching mostly Cree students right now it has been fascinating learning about their language; one of my students even has his Cree name and syllabic spelling on his business card. If you know some Indigenous history at all, then the traditional food called Pemmican might be familiar; it is made with dried meat, fat, and saskatoon berries. In my research for Indigenous owned businesses for our Entrepreneurship course I actually was looking into a company called Mitsoh that sells pemmican strip products, check out their page here if you’ve never had pemmican!! And, just so you know, MITSOH means ‘eat’ in the Cree Nehiyaw language (from their website).
Fun Foodie Fact: By the way, if you’ve never had yummy saskatoon berry fruit leather, well you’re in luck as it is featured in one of Colleen’s Chocolates specialty bars that we only sell at Culina-To-Go which is a Metis owned and operated restaurant I just love! The bars have pieces of my own saskatoon berry fruit leather coated in a blend of 2 Belgian dark chocolates and then topped off with organic Canadian maple flakes.
I talked to Dave about what they do with all the saskatoon berries that they harvest each day? He said most days they sell what they’ve harvested, but they can freeze some of them as well. He was quite excited about their recent purchase of a freeze dryer and their experiments with freeze drying the saskatoon berries. He smiled and said they taste just like candy!
Jason loves saskatoon berries, I am on the fence with them. [Jason’s note:] Saskatoon berries were a part of my childhood, for sure. Seeds, shmeeds - they were FREE! I could pick them in the ravine, on the riverside trails, even in our backyard where we dumped out the leftovers after sorting them and a giant bush grew - plus we loved it when our father would take us out berry picking. Every summer vacation we’d pick and sort berries and our mom would make so many saskatoon pies and platz and make sure to freeze them for winter. My favorite was always the casserole dish of platz (which if you don’t know is a crumb cake of delicious proportions!!). I once ate so much I barfed up a pile of purple puke, hahahaha. [JMC] I find that they have a little too many seeds in them, but now that I’ve had them fresh off the shrubs, and I’m getting to spend some time out in nature, it makes me like saskatoon berries a lot more! And, if I’m going to eat them, then I bet my favourite way will be to enjoy them hot from the stovetop after being cooked with some sugar and then topped with ice cream and granola and straight into my piehole!
So now our question to you, dear reader, is have you tried saskatoon berries before? Many people have never even heard of them so we’re wondering if you have them where you live? And if you do, what is your favorite way to enjoy them??
Not a huge fan. We had tons of Saskatoon berry bushes where I grew up and I find their skins too tough and the crown a very unpleasant texture. I learned a few years ago that they call these Juneberries in the US.