Huckleberries

We went huckleberry picking with Shad's mom and aunt.

It's a good drive from town, but it's worth it.

And if you want to know where our huckleberry patch is, I can't tell you... because I don't know how to get there.

I never go by myself, so I don't pay attention to how we get there.

After walking a short while, we found some good spots to sit down and start picking.

We strapped Avery into her stroller, and stuck her next to a bush.

It didn't take her long to figure out what to do.

She didn't have a bucket to drop the huckleberries into, so she just ate them.

She ate quite a few huckleberries while we were there.

Graham did have a bucket.

But he didn't use it much.

Drake would get a decent amount of huckleberries in his bucket...

... and then he'd eat them. Drake likes to try to eat everyone else's huckleberries too.

When the kids got tired of picking berries, they wandered between the adults.

Here they are with Shad's mom.

And here is Shad.

Shad's aunt had a really good patch a little further from us.

To get a decent amount of huckleberries, you have to pick for a while.

And we might have gotten a little more if I didn't take pictures.

But then I couldn't bore you with a ton of pictures.

Slowly we'd fill our buckets and dump them into larger containers, only to fill them up again.

This is to give you an idea of the size of a huckleberry, in case you're unfamiliar with them.

And this is how they look on the bush.

Graham ended up with a leaf in his ear, of which he was completely unaware. I don't know how it got there.

For as long as we were there, and considering the terrain and slope that we were walking on, these three kiddos did really well.

And look! I really was there.

In the end, Shad and I picked five quarts of huckleberries (that's not counting the ones that were eaten). His mom and his aunt faired pretty well too.

As far as the weather, it was the perfect day to go picking.

Maybe next year the kids will actually collect more than they eat.

Good times.