The Huckleberry Marsh

Buckwheat Row is only about 2 miles long, running from Groveton on Highway 16 to the Huckleberry Marsh. There is no road through the marsh, so you have to turn around and bounce back to the highway over the potholes in the narrow gravel road that serves a dozen farms.

The senior Mr. Kingston was the harbinger of ripe huckleberries. He would walk into the marsh and when they were ripe in June he would spread the news, which was not as difficult as it would seem since we had a party line that included the whole area. The party line served the function that the Internet serves today –spreading the news!

Huckleberries are different from blueberries, darker in colour and growing on quite high bushes, but tasting a lot like wild blueberries and serving the same function in pies and on the table. We would travel there by horse and wagon, usually as a whole family, carrying milk pails to pick in. It was a long walk from the end of the road out into the marsh requiring rubber boots and lots of energy.

The great thing about picking huckleberries is that they grow on bushes, not near the ground as wild blueberries do, so filling a pail did not take all that long. They grow in bunches as the picture suggests, so they can be collected by the handful. The struggle was to get those huge pails brimful with ripe berries back to the wagon safely.

Needless to say we ate lots of berries while we picked, for huckleberries are juicy and rich. But the huckleberry shortcake and the pie was what we really looked forward to as the reward for picking.