Another warm spring means another year of bountiful berries across Alaska

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Evangeline Chamberlain, 1, eats a blueberry while berry picking at Arctic Valley on Friday, July 29, 2016. Sarah Beth Chamberlain, left, and neighbor Ingrid Schuart filled their containers with blueberries and crowberries to bake with and store for the year. (Sarah Bell / Alaska Dispatch News)

Another mild winter and spring means another year of bountiful berries across much of Alaska.

University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service agents in both Anchorage and Fairbanks say reports of berries being ripe ahead of schedule — and ample in quantity — are numerous.

"We've had people come in and say, 'This is a place I've never gone to get berries,' but they said they just looked out across the meadow and it was just blue," said Leslie Shallcross, Anchorage Cooperative Extension health and home faculty member. "There are just so many blueberries."

Blueberries, raspberries, salmonberries and others have already been spotted around Southcentral, ripe and ready for picking. The early berries are a repeat of last year, when an early spring and mild winter led to similar reports of good berry harvests around the state.

Roxie Dinstel, associate director of Cooperative Extension, said normally the Fairbanks berries are ripe by the time the Tanana Valley State Fair starts. That's set for Friday, and she said she's been hearing for weeks that berries are already plentiful around Interior Alaska.

She thinks the lack of intense cold this winter — temperatures never even dipped to 30 below zero — likely had berries growing earlier this year.

"Things were up and running faster this year," said Dinstel, who's worked in Fairbanks for the last 22 years.

Shallcross said weather in Southcentral has been ideal for ripening berries, with plenty of sun and moisture. The lack of cold during the spring helped blossoms develop earlier in the year and kept pollinators moving.

"I think (the plants) got what they needed," she said.