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Show Cool climate creates excellent crop I moderates the temperatures, and cool weather treats the tender berries gently, as anyone who has traveled through the area this time of year can testify. Raspberries weren't the only things that benefited from the cool weather. Outside of the berries and other hearty fruits, the mild temperatures discouraged most fruit growing, but it made for excellent sweet corn. And I've never found anything to rival the peas grown in Bear Lake valley. On cool evenings like we're experiencing now, my friends and I would often find ourselves chasing the girls on the other side of the valley usually in Bloomington, and usually without much success. And more than once we would creep into somebody's garden (someone we knew, just in case we got caught), and lie still in the dirt, quietly stuffing our pockets with the ripe peas so we wouldn't disturb the dog that was fidgeting around the front door on a leash certain that something was going on, but not certain enough to sound a general alarm. , m When we could find n04, one more pea pod, we'd; f ) agam until we came to to! Then wed sprint for fea the dog, now with a dear" the culpnte, howled theenfo awake. (It didn't ta rV Bloomington is a small hi 'P ; Bear Lake valley's ml J may have discouraged J produce, but it produced otkev.l that I've never seen equalled'"-. raspberries and com tandi: my memory. But nothinj , Tiir match those peas we used u .in( garden raids. (" ir And I'll be hones!::, ... that I'm not sure if theirfe. riin more a result of the m4-mate which we procured them Ik; '.km valley's unique climate c Co I'd like to go back a-,::; ! experiment, comparing tW'. vrv tl gotten through legitimate r .'Ai with a bunch I've gathered li- five late-night raid, just to see J M But I can't. It's dishonta,! p Hi dignified. . .and I'm too sk Mir I guess the memory dtto suffice. pd IT.lt 6 By MARC HADDOCK Cool nights remind the me of the summers of my youth, when I didn't know it could still be hot at night. Nights in Bear Lake Valley are always cool, and a really hot summer day is unusual. That coolness has its disadvantages. The short growing season presents problems for farmers and gardners alike. We always got freezes into June, and sometimes even in July. When you have to do all of your gardening in three months, it gets hard. Not very many people try to grow tomatoes. And it kind of makes you wonder why anyone would want to settle an area that is that inhospitable to an agrarian society. But the cool weather also has its advantages and lends itself to some of the finest produce I've ever encountered. For example, the climate is ideal for raspberries, especially around the lake. And towards the end of August and beginning of . September, we could always count on a plentiful supply of Bear Lake raspberries in my father's grocery store. About that time, almost everyone we knew who didn't have a summer job would go over to Garden City where the raspberry canes were laden with the fruit. As far as I know, they didn't make a lot of money. But the work of moving up and down the rows picking the berries attracted a lot of people. When the first crates of the sweet berries started coming in, my cousin Kent and I would often find our way to the back room where, when no body was looking, we would scoop up a handful of the berries and stuff them into our mouths. Our mouths must have been as stained with dark red as were our aprons from carrying the crates out to the cars of our customers who preferred to buy them from us rather than make the 20-mile drive to the raspberry patches. Even better than the fresh berries were the raspberry-sickles that were made by mixing the fresh berries with sugar and freezing them on a stick. Raspberries are still big business in Bear Lake valley, where the lake |