News

Ripe raspberries should be ready the first part of July

By Alicia Wicklund

06/05/2012

Berry picking season is just around the corner and the Munsons, owners of U-Pick Raspberry Farm, are busy getting their patch ready. If weather permits, ripe raspberries should be ready to pick the first part of July.

“It’s a family effort,” Dean Munson said of the raspberry farm.

Dean and his wife Teresa’s two children, Jared (15) and Emmalie (12), will do most of the pre-picked orders and earn enough to buy a few things they are saving up for.

Yet, Dean and Teresa do the majority of the maintenance work which includes cutting the dead canes from the plants, pulling weeds and tilling.

Approximately 10 years ago in 2002, Gary Wall and his wife Loretta started the raspberry patch.

They married in 2001. The open hay field intrigued Gary on the farm and he felt it was unproductive. He thought, maybe they could do something with it, aside from bailing one bale of hay.

“So I tilled up the land and struck off three lines. About every one to two feet I planted a raspberry plant, which was transplanted from Loretta’s family plot, which was quite small,” Wall said. “Within about one year of planting during the spring and fall, the three-row patch was pretty well complete.”

But with each plant, shoots soon sprung up.

“Within a couple years, those three rows became wider and wider,” Wall said.

He had a little room on the outside of the rows, so he started additional rows.

Wall particularly liked when families came out with the little ones.

“We would show them where the ripe raspberries were hiding. It was so fun to watch them pick,” Wall said. “I thoroughly enjoyed my time out there.”   

Wall moved back to his hometown of Bottineau in 1998 from Napa, Calif. after retiring from 30 years of practicing dentistry.

The Munson’s are originally from West Virginia.

They moved to North Dakota in May of 2004, when Dean had an order from the air force base in Minot. Prior to North Dakota they were stationed in England for three years.

“We were really looking for places when we got assigned to Minot and couldn’t find exactly what we were looking so we decided to live on the base for a few years and to look for something later,” Dean said. “Then one day I was out turkey hunting and wanted to head up to Strawberry Lake and camp. I just wanted to drive up this road and head up to the lake and saw the for sale sign. We started looking at it and talked to the realtor and came up and looked at it a few times and decided this is where we want to be.”

“We purchased the farm at the end of September in 2008,” Dean said, a retired air force man of one year. “Our first summer was 2009 that we worked the patch. Growing up back east, we did a lot of gardening when I was a kid. We had a raspberry patch but nowhere near the size of this one. They were black raspberries and were a little sweeter variety.”

He continued, “We didn’t get into the raspberry thickets as much because we had to worry about copperheads and even some rattle snakes.”
The Munsons haven’t had to buy any plants for the patch but have had to do some transplanting to fill in some holes.

Within a few weeks, the raspberry bushes should start flowering and around the first week of July the patch should open.

“Moisture is what the bushes need right now. Once they do start flowering, the bees are just loaded,” he said.

According to Dean, he has been told some of the honey that is collected in the area has a hint of raspberry flavor.

“Apparently it is really good honey,” he said.
Other than eating the berries, Dean said what he enjoys the most is the socializing and meeting the people that stop by.

“There are a lot of local people that come out, but there are a lot that don’t even know we have the patch out here,” Dean said. “We advertise in the paper, have signs out along the road, as well as flyers. We get a lot of people traveling through. Last year we had some people from New York that were traveling across the country and they even stopped by.”

He added, “We have friends from the base and people from Minot that like to drive out too.”
The Munsons try to keep and freeze as many berries as they can.  

“We typically just make jam and jelly,” he said. “My wife loves to bake so we keep some frozen so she can make pies and crisps. She makes an awesome raspberry rhubarb pie.”

At some point they may try to sell some jams and jellies, but for now they give most of what they make away as gifts.

“When the berries need to be picked, but there is nobody out here to come and pick them, that’s when we like to go out so we can freeze them,” he said.

As for picking, the Munsons have ice cream containers with strings attached to them so people can carry them around their neck.

“We try to tell those picking to only fill the bucket half way full. When they come out of the patch we transfer the berries to pint containers,” he said.

Maintenance starts as soon as the snow has cleared and the soil is dry enough to till. As for trimming the bushes, Dean likes to keep them trimmed back to about four feet high.

“That way they are a little more manageable and easier for people to reach,” he said.  

This year he had to mow between the rows because the grasses were coming up so thick and there were getting to be a lot of dandelions.

Typically they haven’t had that problem.

“It’s a lot of work to keep up the patch,” Dean said, and joked about handing over a pair of gloves to help.

The raspberry farm is open until about mid-August. Sometimes the Munsons will even be able to pick a handful or two for just their family come mid September to put on top of their cereal or oatmeal in the morning.

The Munsons recommend the best berry picking the first few weeks they are open as that’s when the berries are thickest and most abundant.

Dean works for BNSF in Minot as a railroad conductor and his wife works at central school in Bottineau as a paraprofessional.  

“Some people come out to pick a pint and others come out to reminisce,” Dean said. “A lot of grandparents bring out their grandchildren. It’s nice seeing kids out here.”

As for when the raspberry farm will be open, stay tuned to the Bottineau Courant as well as signs and flyers posted around the area. The raspberry farm is located about two miles northwest of Bottineau on 11th Avenue on the left hand side of the road.