The Saskatoon Berry

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A couple of years back when we started to clear our farm land, we happily discovered a couple of rows of Juneberry shrubs (also called Saskatoons out west, or Service Berries in the US). They were hidden by overgrown wild roses and young mulberry bushes, back walnut and black locust trees. We freed our small Juneberry bushes, but last year found just a few berries.

This year, we will be getting a great harvest and they are now ready to pick.

The Juneberries/Saskatoons/Service Berries are ready to pick

The berries resemble a Blueberry, but they have small seeds similar to apple seeds. Experimenting with these in the past, we found that they contained a significant amount of pectin.

The taste is somewhat similar to a Blueberry and pretty much anything done with the Blueberry can be done with the Saskatoon. So with our first basket picked it will now be time to say goodbye to our Strawberry pies in the Tea Room, and hello to Saskatoon pie! We're even planning to make some Saskatoon jam and Saskatoon syrup.

In fact, a lot is tarting to come from the local fields including our own farm.

The Black Currants are just about ready for picking and the raspberries are now coming on line (including our favourite: the Black Raspberry).

The Black Currants are promising to be a bumper crop this year.

We'll even have a pretty good crop of Black Raspberries coming soon

With the Tea Room rather busy this year, we'll have to keep the blog entries rather short. So we'll just close this week by announcing our next major event: a Downton Abbey Tea Party. This will be in September.

We have a lot of folks asking about this, so anyone interested should call Carol (289-897-8943) for more information or to book a seating (numbers will be limited).