There are wild strawberries to be picked both in my garden and along a small road I walked in the woods. It must mean it is still summer? But I have to admit that I have started harvesting wild berries and that usually means the summer is ending for this year.
I have picked billberries, or blueberries as we call them in norwegian (blåbær). They are smaller than american blueberries, but the taste is richer and they contain more vitamins, and not the least: there are a lot this year and they are free to pick in the woods.
The raspberries were late this year, and I am picking them now. Both the big ones in my garden, and the smaller wild ones that have the richest raspberry taste you can imagine. They grow abundantly along the fields just outside my garden, and I also have a taste of them when I walk the dog in the woods. At home I do as I do with all wild berries: I mash them with some sugar and eat it as jam on bread. Or use them as dessert.
Later I will pick cowberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea). They are not ripe yet, but are one of my favorites among the wild berries, even if they are not very sweet. Actually they are quite sour, but mixed with sugar they taste excellent on bread. Personally I prefer dark bread made with different kinds of flour and seeds with the cowberry jam.
I have picked more cloudberries, but now that season is soon finished, even at the high mountains were they ripen last. With the cloudberries I don’t do as with the other wild berries. I don’t mash them with some suger and then freeze what I don’t need at once. Instead I sprinkle some of them with sugar and freeze them like this, to be eaten as dessert with fresh cream later. Most of them I boil just a little, with sugar of course, and fill in hot glass jars. These can be frozen also, but it is not not necessary if they are going to be eaten within a year or two and you have a cool cellar. Like cowberries they contain a lot of natural preservatives and they can stay fresh for ages.. More photos here.
Oh Yum love berries great shots.
Cheers Callie
Oh, you’re killin’ me!
!!! They looks so amazing
Oh wow… Never heard of some of these berries, but their jams sound AMAZING!!!
What an amazing harvest.. the slugs and blackbirds had my strawberries this year before I could get to them but I did rather better with my tomatoes. I’ve never seen wild blueberries in the UK..
Beautiful collection of berry photos. They all look so yummy! It was a very good berry year here too but we don’t have the variety that you do.
Your billberries look very similar to our wild huckleberries that we have here in Montana. Beautiful photos!
Very nice colors and light… but it is difficult to reach only with the eyes… Yum !!
Yummy pictures !
I’ve often wondered what it is that makes the wild berries taste so much better. I wasn’t familiar with all of your berries, but they look so wonderful and delicious. Great images.
¡Qué envidia!
Deben estar buenísimos…
Preciosas fotografías.
Oh Yum! Wonderful photos
Dang! . . . I want me some of those!
Excellent photos, as well.
What a wonderful berry collection that you have here. You have been quite busy picking them, and one of my favorites is the wild raspberry. We do have those in Maryland and I stop by the side of the road so that I can get some. Many don’t make it home though.
I am jealous with your harvest.
Yum!
What lovely photos, Bente! How lucky you are that you can get such a harvest!
Oh Bente, can I come over to Norway and live in your woods? LOL
I love berries, but usually only buy blueberries, raspberries & strawberries in summer at the food market and since I had to take early retirement from working, I can no longer afford raspberries which are really expensive and have a short season in Australia.
I would soooooo love to be able to pick them in the wild. Your photos are just wonderful and after looking at them, I am really hungry.
I’ve never heard of cowberries or cloudberries before your post.
you and your berries… making everyone hungry and a little jealous!
gorgeous photos!
delightful and delicious, Bente
Wow, you’ve found a lot of cloudberries! Here they’re hard to find this year…poor harvest
What a harvest for you….now the tasting…my mouth is watering already.
Yum! Yes, the berries signal the summer is moving on… but not quite over. We get wild blackberries on the roadsides in the country in late January and what we don’t get to quickly the birds do. Oh, and Council likes to spray the bushes because they consider them noxious!
Smultronstället
We seem to have our taste in bread and berries in common.
I also pick and eat them when doing some work in my small garden. That is, if the birds haven’t beat me to it.
a very good harvest. you will not be hungry this winter
Delicious post! We have some volunteer wild strawberries in our yard, and my dogs always pick them clean before I get a chance to have any.
Un magnífico esfuerzo de relato fotográfico… y del final apoteósico dulce, declino entrar: demasiada golosina para no pecar mortalmente… ¡Qué tío!…
Felicidades, Bente!!!
What a great gift from nature.
Oh my! I am so envious Bente! I haven’t even seen some of those before
Thanks for the gorgeous colourful photos.
Wow, Bente, I wouldn’t mind a jar of these wonderful fruits!
Lovely mouth watering post!!!
lucky is the bear in your neighborhood …
These photos are amazing. And they’re making me hungry.
They look yummy! Can I have some! LOL!
tell no one
i want a fjord
Such beautiful berries, some of which I’ve never tasted and so seem very exotic. Wild raspberries too are something I’ve never heard of! Enjoy your bounty, Christina
I can almost taste them… Ummm.
I can remember when we ate raspberries with sugar, I was only a kid in my grandparents´ house…
Jota.
what a tasty post. I will now go and have mixed fruit jam from my fridge. Ben do you harvest all that in your garden alone?
This reminds me also of my childhood, when my grandmother made lots of preserves and we went out foraging for all those wonderful things nature has to offer – in autumn we’d go out mushroom hunting, too! Wonderful post, thanks very much, you made my mouth water just thinking of those blue berries, yum!
Nice photos… you got me craving all kinds of berries now
So beautifully photographed! I wanted to pick up the fork and taste some!
Bente, those all look amazing! There is nothing better than fresh berries, I think. Beautiful!
You have so many berries there! That must make late summer a wonderful time!
delicate tribute to the lightness in this series
wow– wish i could ave a years supply parceled to india
we dont have these varieties in india :
-(
Looks delicious. I haven´t seen the Cloudberries before, interesting!
¡Muy buenas fotografías, parece una anuncio de televisión!, me encantan los colores, y la toma del peso es genial, besos
Mmmm….yummy!~ Cowberry, cloudberry, billberry (blueberries that I’ve never seen grow in the wild)…what luxury and exoticism. You’re so lucky! ;oD
Beautiful colors and… namnam
My mouth is watering at these photos! I have wild strawberries as a ground cover in my flower bed. They hitchhiked on something I transplanted and beautifully fill in the ground at the base of the flowers. Our strawberries are best in late Spring. I love to eat them just the way nature made them.
The fresh berries with sunshine and sugar all look so wonderful, and how wonderful to have some of this stored away for winter. Lucky you!
Yum, they look delicious! Love the first photo.
Really nice photos
Beautiful photo’s and fine Jam. Have a nice week. Greatings Ineke
Thanks a lot for your nice comment, Ineke.
Enjoy eating them all, is a great great fruit eater especially the wild ones…
Cowberries is so wonderful for roast beef or moose steak
- but loves them all…
Cowberries are my favorite on my breakfast (homemade) sandwich, toghether with butter and our sweet, brown cheese. But wonderful with moose steak too, for sure. Thanks Drakenoir.
You’ll have to change your name from Bente Haarstad to Bær Haarstad.
Thats a really good one, Steve. How in earth did you know……
In your post you mentioned blåbær, which is how I knew.
Yes, exactly; blåbær, tyttebær, bringebær, multebær, jordbær.
Congratulations! I just nominated you for The Kreativ Blogger Award:)
http://hotrodcowgirl.com/2012/08/26/hot-rod-cowgirl-nominated-for-three-awards-the-kreativ-sunshiny-and-lovely-awards/
Thanks Cowgirl, I am so greatful. And congratulations to you too. I’ll see to it later…
As Always My Friend:)
Hi Bente, I am going to tell my niece about your website and blog. She is going to stay with a host family during the months of November, December and January. I think she will find your accounts and photographs of life in Norway very interesting. She won’t get to sample your wonderful berries though. What a pity.
I hope your nice will have a wonderful stay, Margaret, even without sampling berries.
WOW! This is my favorite post/photo of day! You are amazing… Thank you dear Bente, have a nice week, love, nia
You are so nice, thanks for your lovely comment, dear Nia.
Enjoy summer berries and enjoy the pretty pictures. Greetings.
Thanks for your nice comment, Antonio.
Yummy! The tiny strawberry in the first picture would make a great picture in my kitchen … these are creative!
That could be possible (on http://www.bentehaarstad.no). Thanks a lot any way, Angela.
This is wonderful! Thank you (:
A cry for humility ~t what your photos bring to my heart! Magnificent poetry in photography!~ Blessings ~Deborah
You are so kind, thanks, Deborah.
That is one thing I miss about the mountains in San Francisco. Picking Blueberries.
I would miss it too, living in a place without these wild ones. Thanks, Karen.
Hi Bente,
I have nominated you for the Sisterhood Award.
http://seasonspoetry.com/2012/08/28/the-sisterhood-award/
Ciao,
Francina
That sound like a great award, Francina. Thanks a lot, and I will look at this later.. Ciao
Your photos made my mouth water.
Stunning!
That was the intention, thanks Adin.
Sometimes you see and read something, and you want to say something, to acknowledge how much you liked it, and how inspired it makes you feel, but the right words feel a little asinine, or inadequate. Nevertheless, some kind of response (inadequate or not) seemed completely necessary. So sorry for clogging up the comments more with this fairly non-responsive response, but CIA and I both just really love berries, and seeing this makes us both wonder how on earth we’ve never been to Norway!?
Thank you for your long and interesting comment, it was really nice. The doors to Norway is always open, CIA & PJD. But wild berries only in august-september…
We’ll have to keep the timing in mind, the next time we head over to Europe (Norway was one country to many for the two-year stint in Europe, which just ended).
It’s next on my (that is to say, PJD’s) list, since I just ticked Iceland off…
As you know, I read and liked this post some time back and yet the images stuck to me the whole time. I just couldn’t shake off the delicous succulent images that you had captured here. Sigh…I just had to come back again just to stare.
Oh I wish I could take photos like yours and oh I wish I had such a bountiful harvest of berries in my forest! Amazing shots Bente and what a stash you’ll have for winter! Sharon
That was very nice of you, Sharon. Especially since you take amazing pictures. And if you are still in Finland, why not just run out and pick some berries in the woods. There might still be billberries (blueberries) and I am sure cowberries around. The last one taste nasty just eaten from the bush, and wonderful crushed and mixed with suger on brown bread. I picked blueberries even when I lived in Oslo years ago, in September..
Thank you Bente for making my day with your kind comment for my photos!!!
Ha en fin dag!! Sharon
My pleasure, Sharon. I really enjoy your photos. Ha en fin dag du også!
Cloudberries! I’ve read so much about them; one day i’ll have a taste of them! Thanks for the lovely post.
I hope you get a chance one day, Nature. Thanks.
Magnifique récolte…j’en ai l’eau à la bouche ! Les photos macro sont superbes .
Merci beaucoup, Pier. Vous avez raison, l’automne est super.
Such richness and abundance! The berries do look yummy. And I am really amazed about the amount of cloudberry. The pictures are beautiful and I like how you vary from close-ups to overviews.
Thanks Otto, and this year the cloudberries were really abundant around here. Not all of them were picked, but I tried my best…
I love berries…especially strawberries and raspberries. Your photos are stunning!!!
Berries are great food, thanks for your comment, Ali.
Wow…I love berries too…especially the humble blue berry!! Thanks for giving me a visit at my photo journal and for the beautiful, healthy feast right here!!
The blue berry is such a great thing, and very healthy too, especially the wild ones. Thanks for your comment, Judy.
These berries look just gorgeous! Do you preserve a bunch of them for the winter months?
Yes, I preserve a lot for winter. I make jam of it, just crushed berries mixed with suger eaten on (I prefer) homemade bread. Many people use these wild berries as dessert also. But the yound people in the 20s and 30s buy their berries and jam in the shop..