There are hundreds of commercial saskatoon plantations in the prairie provinces of Canada; here we have few, although the Nowatzki pick-your-own operation near Langdon has been going for a couple of decades. Perhaps this is a neglected commercial opportunity, but I am personally sort of happy that juneberries in North Dakota remain largely in the realm of folklife. People have their favorite picking places and guard their secrets.
Although they are no secret to the birds. Three species descend on our patch: cedar waxwings, who perch and eat on the top branches; brown thrashers, who come up from the ground; and robins, who occupy the mid-height of the bushes. Left unchecked, they will strip the branches bare before the berries are even ripe.
Thus we enclose our juneberries with nylon nets, which poses another problem, as the birds look for any hole or gap whereby they might gain admittance, but of course, cannot find their way out again. So we inspect the nets, and peg the edges to the ground in the interest of avian safety.
We can hardly consume our crop in-season, which is good, because we want juneberries year-round. The best method of preservation is flash-freezing. Then you can pack the frozen berries in bags and shake out what you need. We commonly flash-freeze a couple dozen quarts.
We don’t use juneberries for jelly; we have lots of other good fruits for jellies and preserves. The highest and best use remains pie, especially in a household such as ours which boasts a champion pie-maker. Our contribution to culinary culture in this respect is what we call a goonberry pie: juneberries mixed with Pixwell gooseberries. (Juneberries, for my taste, need something tart mixed with them.) The same combo is great in turnovers, including the German-Russian iteration of turnover, placinda, and the buttery Mennonite version (my favorite), hemetschwenger. While we’re in German-Russian country, we can note that juneberries are a fine addition to kuchen filling. Or, irrespective of kuchen, I like to just bake them into a custard topped with a little brown sugar.
We hardly ever eat sourdough pancakes without juneberries in them; I love those purple polka-dots on the griddle.
I don’t know anyone making pemmican with juneberries anymore, but among Indigenous folk, they are stewed into a sauce (that’s wojapi in Dakota) into which frybread is dredged.
Juneberries are essential for my favorite winter salad: spinach greens with red onion, topped with juneberries and blue cheese. Here is where the flash-freezing technique shows its worth, as you can just shake the berries from the bag.
Finally, muffins. We don’t care for cakey muffins, so ours have a mix of flours in them, including a bit of whole wheat, but juneberries are ideal for muffins. Instead of disintegrating and bleeding in the baking muffins, they plump up, to constitute purple vanilla-bombs in every bite. Moreover, studies at Cornell University confirm the nutritional superiority of juneberries over their wimpy competitor, blueberries.
When will they be ripe this year? Hard telling. Close study of historic reports indicates juneberries, in line with warming conditions, are maturing earlier these days. 4th of July this year, I hope.
