Dunn’s deal may be next acai

"What the heck is a honeyberry?!” my friend Amber replied when I asked if she wanted to go pick some.  

“It’s a conversation I have 50 times a day,” Big Sky Honeyberries owner David Dunn said later at his venture on Farm to Market Road, where my son and I handily picked 6 pounds of the Vitamin C superfruit on a late-July morning. 

Instead of expressing fatigue over constant consciousness raising, Dunn — who projects the ruddy wide-open mien of a farmer, with a strong handshake to match — seems energized by the opportunities to educate about the berry, also known as haskap or blue honeysuckle. 

“Indigenous people have found it in the woods forever,” he said, standing amid rows of compact bushes on 15 acres. Honeyberries are native to northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia, such as Siberia. The plant weathers temps colder than –50 degrees Fahrenheit, wet conditions and a range of soil. 

Attending the University of Washington earlier in life, Dunn listed his majors as “Partying. Sociology. History.” But life took a turn to the sweet side after he volunteered on a Montana farm.  

“When I started it was me and one other gal in the Bitterroot,” Dunn said.  

His 10,000 starts came from the University of Saskatchewan and went in the ground in 2021 thanks to “a fun group of Craigslist hires, eight to 10 people for three months." 

That’s how I was eventually able to stumble upon the purple fruits at my local grocery. A fruit lover, I thought I had seen them all, but these looked like blueberries, tasted almost raspberry, and then could hit on tart like rhubarb. I was hooked, which finally drove me to Dunn's farm near the end of its U-pick season. 

We weren’t even out of the car and assistant Mikayla Kazmier, otherwise a teacher at Kalispell Middle School, was out waving us a welcome.  

Telling us about the three cultivars on offer — Aurora, Indigo and Honeybee — she handed out containers and gave a 4x4 ride to where the berries had grown “big as grapes.”  

Dunn admitted it wasn't 100% sunny in honeyberry heaven. Just three days from completing harvest on the sections off-limits to amateur pickers, a hydraulic line broke on the half-row berry harvester. I asked if he was mechanically minded. 

“I forced myself to learn the bare minimum,” he said, adding, “I know where to take stuff.”  

This could be a tough one, though: a piece of equipment found in Iowa, made in Poland, and “it’s all metric,” Dunn said, squinting in the sun but confident this, too, would be overcome. 

My son and I finish picking. On the way out we tickle branches into giving up fat handfuls of berries. We talk about how surprising they are. Today the big blueberry-like ones taste less sweet than the ones shaped like garlic cloves. 

My hungry teenager, whom I will have to swat away while I make syrup and freeze some berries for blasts of sunshine come winter, hits on something: “If you crush them with your tongue, it tastes even better than just chewing them.” 

This will take more research, but so far he's right. 

Margaret E. Davis, executive director of the Northwest Montana History Museum, can be reached at mdavis@dailyinterlake.com.