Wild About Huckleberries and Wild Huckleberry Products

All my life I never really thought much about huckleberries. I grew up watching Huckleberry Hound sing “Oh my DARlin’! Oh my DARlin! Oh my Darlin ClemenTIINE!” and never once wondered why he was blue. Singing cartoon dogs can be blue, grey, pink, or orange for all I care. I never really wondered what a huckleberry was. But all that changed within the past year.

You see, a while back I was walking down the yellow brick road — wait, wrong movie. Actually, I visited Spokane, Washington in 2006 and my friend Hawke took me around town while he was running errands. He stopped at a supermarket called Rosauer’s. Over to one side of the store was a specialty food section called “Huckleberrys”. And sure enough among the specialty foods were huckleberry-based products: jams, muffin mixes, honeys, syrups, and things I cannot even remember.

So having discovered that wild huckleberries were real, I thought, “these would make great gifts”. I have some friends who love to travel and taste foods from different parts of the country. As they hadn’t spent much time in eastern Washington (to the best of my knowledge), I thought they would appreciate some wild huckleberry products.

For one reason or another I wasn’t able to buy anything that weekend. But my curiosity about wild huckleberries did not end there. Somewhere along the way I moved to Seattle, WA and began exploring the state. In July 2007 my girlfriend and I visited Spokane again and while I was engaged in other tasks she went on the Great Huckleberry Products quest. Unlike me she won’t just walk into any store and buy the first thing that meets her budget. She’ll look for the best deal she can find.

Read more from ‘Wild About About Huckleberries’.

I’m Your Huckleberry

Val Kilmer gave huckleberries a new lease on life in the 1993 movie “Tombstone” in which he, playing Doc Holiday, told a soon-to-be-dead guy “I’m your huckleberry”.

In 1884 Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) published his memorable novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The book has inspired legions of critics and defenders but how often do people debate Clemens’ use of “huckleberry” was a first name for a protagonist? Huckleberries could not have been widely known and appreciated in the late 1800s.

Huckleberries took a nosedive in credibility in the late 1950s when William Hanna and Joseph Barbera introduced the southern drawl-sporting character Huckleberry Hound. Lovable as he was, Huckleberry Hound did nothing to promote the rich flavor of huckleberries.

Several small towns in the northwestern United States have played host to huckleberry festival. The oldest Huckleberry Festival seems to be based in Bingen, WA but the most well-known Huckleberry Festival appears to be based in Trout Creek, MT.

If we hear about more huckleberry festivals, we’ll be glad to add a section to help people find them more easily.

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