North Harvest Farm sold a variety of thimbleberry desserts at the Houghton Farmers Market on Tuesday as part of the Keweenaw Thimbleberry Festival. Ashley Tenhermsel created a thimbleberry bundt cake that included the berries in the dough and frosting. (Ben Garbacz/Daily Mining Gazette)

HOUGHTON — From the Ground Farmers Market Collective has begun what it hopes will become a large, annual event — the Keweenaw Thimbleberry Festival.

The inaugural festival consists of thimbleberry dishes and beverages from vendors at the Houghton, Hancock and Calumet Farmers Markets and a “berry storybook walk” at the Paavola Wetlands for the remainder of the week. From the Ground Farmers Market put together the festival with this year’s sponsor Visit Keweenaw and community partners Copper Shores Community Health Foundation and Keweenaw Land Trust.

Collective board member Amanda Makela said there has been no organized celebration of the thimbleberry, a fruit that is unique for this part of the country and typically grows in the western mountainous area of the U.S. She explained while many celebrate thimbleberries in their own way with family pickings in the woods, the Collective wanted to create the chance to gather the community together similar to Pasty Fest to celebrate an iconic food.

“When people come up here, it’s kind of like this iconic Copper Country thing to go find thimbleberry jam at the Wooden Spoon or the Jam Pot or any of our great roadside stands,” Makela said.

The Keweenaw Landtrust is working in conjunction with the Collecting to host the berry storybook walk, which displays pages from the book “Berry Song” by Michaela Goade along the wetlands trail. While visitors walk the trails to follow the story, they can pick thimbleberries along the way.

“It’s a story about a girl and her grandmother (of) indigenous background who like talking to each other as they pick berries, and they talk about thimbleberries and all sorts of other berries, how they connect them to the land and connects them to their history and their family,” Makela said. “So we’re hoping that people get inspired to go to somewhere like Paavola, maybe look for berries with their kids and even if they don’t find any, just create a memory together and read the story.”

Local farmers markets featured thimbleberry goods from multiple food stands. Some of the vendors selling or serving thimbleberry dishes Tuesday at the Houghton Farmers Market included North Harvest Farm and Copper Shores.

North Harvest Farm co-owner Jake Tenharmsel said he and his wife, Ashley, have sold thimbleberry jam every year, but were reached out to by the Collective to inform them of the festival. Tenharmsel said this year he and his wife doubled down and made some fun items.

“Ashley has gotten into creating bundt cakes as of recently, and when this opportunity came up for Thimbleberry Festival or Thimbleberry Week, it just seemed like an obvious approach,” he said.

Other thimbleberry items from North Harvest Farm included bundt charms and thumb prints. Tenharmsel said thimbleberries were incorporated into the dishes in many ways such as baking thimbleberries into the dough, placing thimbleberries on top of the bundt cakes and mixing the berries into frosting.

Copper Shores stand offered samples of thimbleberry vinaigrette and copies of its recipe. Copper Shores Community Health Educator Meghan Jaszczak said the intent of the dish was to provide something easy and healthy to make which included the thimbleberries. The vinaigrette was made with oil, vinegar, mustard powder, salt, pepper and thimbleberry jam. The vinaigrette was made at the Meals on Wheels kitchen then spread over locally made sourdough bread.

“I was just trying to think of different ways that you could use a thimbleberry jam that might be something a little bit more fun, a little bit versatile and not time-consuming,” Jaszczak said. “And most people have thimbleberry jam, or know where to get it, and so it’s a different way to use it. It’s something you could use on things like fresh salad greens. It would be really good. We have it today on local sourdough, but you could also drizzle that over something like salmon.”

Vendors also featured thimbleberry items at Wednesday’s Hancock Farmers Market and will at the Calumet Farmers Market on Saturday. Plans to expand the festival next year include involving Keweenaw National Historical Park to conduct ranger walks or exhibits tying in the history of the area to thimbleberries.

“That’s the concept, it starts small, and it has to start small. We all just get a spark of an idea, or a little seed of an idea if you want to use a thimbleberry reference, and it grows by people getting excited and seeing these fun drinks and foods and things that they can use in very creative ways, and just kind of have some community pride because the thimbleberry is iconic to this region, and we should love this thing and cherish it and want it to be a part of our identity up here,” Makela said.