Today was foraging day, and we didn't get very far outside our neighbourhood, when we returned hardly 2hrs later with 6 grocery bags of chokecherry berries, leaves and twigs. I only need to make 10 jars of chokecherry juice concentrate this year for my usual count of 10 in the freezer, but my daughter's tea business needs a full, large tub of dried chokecherry leaf! So hence the leaves and twigs. I have day two of my summer part-time job tomorrow, and then Wednesday I'll begin separating the berries into a pot to boil and the leaves onto trays to dry.

A few of the bushes we picked at, had branches so laden down that they were literally on the ground. When we picked the berries off those branches, they were able to lift. We found one bush where an entire trunk and bent over to the ground! We picked it up, and arranged it behind a fellow tree's branches to support it until it's berries ripen so we can pick them. They hadn't gotten much sun on the ground and now they should be able to.

Another bush we picked a little from, had decided to take a break this year. Fruiting bushes and trees normally have a rest year followed by a bumper year, but of the trees we picked from today, only one bush chose a rest year, the rest were as busy as they had been last year! Needless to say, there is far more fruit out there than we can hope to harvest, but we'll do our best with the space and means we have available.