YET ANOTHER RIPE BAYFIELD BERRY

THE JUNEBERRY TREE IN OUR GARDEN...

...IS ABSOLUTELY LOADED WITH FRUIT...

...BUT THE BERRIES DON'T ALL RIPEN AT THE SAME TIME...

...SO IT TAKES A LOT OF EFFORT TO PICK THEM IN QUANTITY

Thursday, 8:15 AM.  60 degrees F, wind SSW. very light.  The sky is clear with some haze in the east.  The humidity is 84% and the barometer is trending down somewhat but is still high, at 30.18".
   The Juneberries, Amelanchier canadensis, in the rose family, are loaded with fruit this year, and are ripe for the picking now.  We have a nice little tree at the back of the perennial garden and I may actually take the effort to pick enough to put on ice cream or cereal this year (jelly would be the better use but we are not likely to take the trouble).  The problem with the native Juneberries is that they pretty much ripen one at a time and it is time consuming to pick them.  That and the fact that as they ripen everything from chipmunks and every bird imaginable to the bears will be in the trees eating the ripe little apple-like berries.  Yesterday there was a beautiful Baltimore oriole flitting among the branches.  Bears can be particularly destructive, and can take down a small tree with one swipe of a paw to get at the fruit.
   Our little tree is an offspring of a large parent tree in the woods across the street that must be thirty-five or more feet in height.  I keep trimming the top branches of our tree so that it does not grow into our view of the lake.
   Juneberries have a rather mild, not overly sweet flavor, somewhat akin to that of an apple, but the pulp is soft, more like a blueberry.  The berry contains a few very small seeds that are eaten along with the pulp.  There are shrubby varieties of Amelanchier that can be efficiently grown as a row crop if the bushes are covered with netting when bearing fruit.  I used to see some Juneberries offered for sale by the local orchards but I don't think it is much of a cash crop, unless grown on a pretty large scale.  The berries are pleasant tasting to eat out of hand and jams and jellies could be a worthwhile sale item, as the bushes and trees bear quite heavily.