| sonshine4u |
Posted - Sep 27 2014 : 2:35:27 PM
Hi Farmgirls!
Just had to share my crazy experience with highbush cranberries today....
I moved onto this farm 3 years ago and there were some bushes that had beautiful red berries on them. I was curious if they were edible or not and started searching the internet to figure it out. I landed on what I thought was pretty close and that was a highbush cranberry.
I have a friend in Alaska that forages all the time and sent her pictures of the berries and foilage to confirm. She said they did look like highbush cranberries and then gave me some great information from the Alaska Extension on them. So this year I decided I would try harvesting them and turning them into jam or fruitleather or some other magical thing.
I started harvesting them this morning and a few hours later with some help from my neighbor girl and my daughter, I had 16 glorious cups of beautiful red berries. My first hint should've been that the berry tasted awful. But the info did say they were really tart, so I carried on.
I decided to make some fruit leather first and so I pureed the berries and added bananas... and then more bananas....and more bananas....then some honey....UGH! It was still terrible!!!
I decided to look this up and figure out if I was crazy or what...well, I found an article that explained how difficult it was to determine if you had the right kind of highbush cranberry to eat. Apparently I don't.
So ladies, if you're curious if you have the right one for consumption, please look at this article that has photos of the berries, leaves, and seeds (which confirmed it for me). http://arcadianabe.blogspot.com/2013/08/highbush-cranberry-de-befuddled.html
Farmgirl Hugs!
~April
River Valley Farmgirls
Chapter Leader
~Playing in the Sonshine~
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