Chokecherry Harvest Has Begun!

Today’s foraging run was all about the chokecherries! Many of the trees are only half-ready to pick at this time, but others are fully ready, some Pin (red) and some Black. Some bushes put out tiny berries, but most of them are putting out really fat, plump berries this year!

We actually need more leaf than cherry this year, but I’ll make more juice concentrate and syrups with the berries we bring home just the same. We have quite a bit already dried from previous years that we haven’t worked our way through yet, so no need to dry them this year. We do however, go through the crushed leaf a fair bit both for home use in teas and for use in the wildcrafted teas we sell through Ashtree Wildcrafting. Chokecherry leaf is one of three bases we build our teas from. The other two are alfalfa and occasionally canada thistle. Each base lends something to the tea built over top of it. Chokecherry leaf sometimes adds a fruity flavour when no fruit is in the tea blend. Always a pleasant surprise when that flavour comes out.

Some of the bushes we came across today are so over-abundant that they have snapped branches, or are near to snapping them. We unloaded those we could, but some branches bore so many soon-to-be-ripe fruit, that we couldn’t harvest much, and we’re hoping those branches don’t break by the time those berries are ready.

We wanted to get more hawthorn today, and we got a little, but by the time we reached a decent hawthorn bush, we’d already been out for nearly 2 hours and the grocery cart was full!

We had errands to run today too, so seeing as our foraging zone today was within walking distance, we took the cart full of berries home, hoped in the truck and did our errands.

Now we need to separate out all the berries from their leaves and stems, throw them into a crockpot outside, and boil them till they split their skins. This takes longer in a crockpot than on the stove, but it keeps the steam outside. I’ll make more chokecherry syrup again this year and jar it for use over the coming year. We only need 20 jars of concentrate for month to month use between growing seasons, and already have that in the freezer! I’ll add a few more, maybe give some away, but we certainly don’t need too many more jars of the concentrate.

I might need to invest in some pectin to make jelly!

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