Word went out to all berry pickers in the Hazeltons. You could earn $25- for each gallon of wild Huckleberries delivered to a depot in South Hazelton.
Four days later, the new Wilp Sa Maa'y Harvesting
Co-operative had spent their entire purchasing budget and had 325 gallons of Huckleberries in the freezer!
The berries were quick- frozen to keep until the next step, making the wild berries into samples of jam or jelly.
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| Darlene Vegh shows frozen wild Huckleberries |
The samples will be sent to hotels, restaurants, gift shops and anyone else who may be a future customer for berry products from the Hazelton area.
The Co-operative is the result of bold thinking by several workers at SWAT,
the Strategic Watershed Analysis Team. They do resource mapping for the Gitskan, the local Native govenment. |
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One of their projects involved the study of certain berry shrubs that are common to Gitskan lands.
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| At the wild berry depot in South Hazelton |
The SWAT workers learned that our local berries have a high value as specialty jams and jellies. They also learned that current forestry policy treats Huckleberry, soap berry, and other food shrubs as competition for young
planted trees. Fire suppression helps prevent forest fires but also is suspected to cause decline in the amount and quality of berry shrubs.
Berry bushes thrive in old burns and require a specific amount of shade. Too much sun and they
dry out. Too much shade and the crop is small. The FRBC funded research by the SWAT team and Symbios Research of Smithers to determine how forestry practices on Gitskan lands in the future could benefit both trees and berry shrubs.
Darlene Vegh, Russell Collier, Marilyn Woodcock and Phil and Carla Burton decided to establish a new business to use the wild berries and to turn part of future profits back into research on how to manage wild lands to encourage better
berry crops.
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