Famous Bear Lake Raspberries

Saturday afternoon my brother Reed, called from Laketown.  He said he was sitting in his raspberry patch and that he had raspberries coming out of his ears.  I'm not sure he meant that literally, but he said he had more raspberries than he knew what to do with, more than he could get picked and more than he had a market for, and said he didn't wan any more of them to go to waste than need be.  He said I could come over and pic what I wanted to on Monday, so I rolled out of bed early and headed over the hill to pick some of those famous Bear Lake Raspberries.  There were lots of berries and I picked for about six hours and came home with enough for at least a few good raspberry desserts and shakes throughout the year.  I enjoyed the solitude and it was good to see that the raspberry industry in Bear Lake has not totally disappeared and that it has a little more basis than just a crazy celebration in Garden City the first week of August every year.  I saw a bumper sticker a while back which read:  "If it's tourist season, how come we can't shoot them."  I think there are some of the natives of that part of the country who'd gladly display a bumper sticker like that.

Yummy, famous, Bear Lake Raspberries.

Waiting to be picked and put into a delicious raspberry shake.

Reed has about four acres of raspberries on his place near the cemetery in Laketown.  That comes to about a mile of row similar to the ones in this picture.  This picture was taken just before the sun came up on the raspberry patch.  Reed has Travis, his youngest son and his wife Linzee, running the raspberry patch.  He teaches school in Providence, and the berries are a little later this year so school is starting up before he is really ready and finished with the raspberry harvest.  They get a lot of people, mostly from Logan, to come over and pick the berries.  Some seem to have had a lot of practice picking.  One lady told me she has picked as many as 18 cases in a day.  Not bad at eight  dollars a case.

When you come around don't be shy about asking us to make you a raspberry shake.  We may have to make a quick run to Smith's for the ice cream, but we'll have the berries