Farmers such as Ed Walker of Hillsboro are experimenting with growing the fruit from the blueberry family, long popular in Scandinavian cuisine.

Walker is a berry farmer and general manager for Sherwood based Columbia Empire Farms. His first crop of lingonberries-an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 pounds-is going to the company's Dundee plant to be turned into preserves and syrup that will be sold at its Your NorthWest stores and specialty markets.

"This is Europe's answer to our cranberry," Walker says. Unlike strawberries or blueberries but definitely like cranberries, they need sweetening to be edible. The taste of the berries from both cultivated plants and from the wild is similar.

Walker had read about the hardy, pea-sized berries and suggested them to his bosses "on a whim." They gave him the go-ahead to try growing some of the small bushes.

"This is supposed to be a good climate," Walker notes. While he was completely unfamiliar with lingonberries, he had no qualms when it came time for planting: "It goes in the ground and you grow it."

Lingonberries grow wild or domestically in more that a dozen European countries. Scandinavia produces more than 100 million pounds each year and turns them into jams, jellies, preserves, concentrates, liqueurs, candies and ice creams, according to Ross Penhallegon, tri-county Oregon State University horticulture extension agent in Eugene.

In North America, the berries are grown in six Canadian provinces and eight states, including 21 growers in Oregon and Washington, Penhallegon says.

Walker, staring at the tiny bright berries being handpicked on 3 1/2 acres, says he had never seen a lingonbeery until his first crop bore fruit. "If you'd taken me to a market and shown me a bin of them, I wouldn't have known what they were."

In addition to lingonberries, Walker's 300 acres include strawberries, red and black raspberries, and chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot gris grapes.

Lingonberries bear two crops each year. Walker's first harvest started in late August; another followed in late September - although crops grown in other regions can come on in spring and as late as October. Some lingonberry growers worldwide harvest only the second crop durning the summer because the first crop can be affected by frost.

In the East, crop have been harvested with hand rakes, in the same manner as low-growing blueberries. In Germany, mechanical picking has been successful. Walker hopes to eventually harvest his lingonberries mechanically with strawberry-picking equipment. For that reason, he's planted the bushes with the same spacing used for strawberries.

But the lingonberry game is new, and much is unknown. Although growers have already determined that the plants can be grown in the Northwest, other issues remain.

Mark Whitham, a berry grower in Harrisburg, says fruiting is still a question: Can growers get enough yield to make them profitable? Whitham put in only an acre two years ago. Will enough of the berries ripen at the same time? Can they be raked or picked mechanically? Hand-harvesting, he explains, would not be profitable.

"The only thing I can see in agriculture making money is blueberries," Whitham notes. "The rest you could plow under." He grows both blueberries and raspberries commercially, and his lingonberries "are very much an experiment."

If they were profitable, lingonberries would have several advantages over blueberries and raspberries: Blueberries need extensive prunin; low-growing (foot-tall) lingonberry bushes don't. Blueberries often need netting strung over them to keep out berry-loving birds; lingonberries don't. And raspberries have vines, called canes, that must be tied up; lingonberries don't.

Whitham said his family put up some lingonberry syrups and jellies, which they sold at this year's Junction City Scandinavian Festival. "They went over OK," he says. He doesn't think there's much potential for them to be sold fresh. And the market price for juice stock-juice sold to be mixed with other juices to make bottled drink mixes-has plummeted below what it would cost to produce it.

Don Tapio, Washington State University extension agent for Gray's Harbor County, cautions that, like with any other crop, growers should detemine a bona fide market before they start. While agents can provide information on varieties, pest, fertilizing, and so on, they can't guarantee a market for a crop such as lingonberries.

Your Northwest plans to sell the lingonberry syrups separately and with its packaged mixes for aebleskivers, the traditional, sphere-shaped, Scandinavian pancakes cooked in special cast-iron skillets.

Recipes calling for lingonberries include cone-shaped cookies made with a krumkaker-like pastry and filled with whipped cream, served on a pool of sweetened berries in sauce, or desserts such as rice puddings or Swedish pancakes. In Scandinavia, the berries are also served with meatballs and meats such as venison or reindeer.

As Walker, the Hillsboro grower notes, lingonberries are for people "who want something different, definitely more unusual."

But don't look for them at market yet. There simply isn't enough supply. Growing them is still a cutting-edge experiment with bottom-line dollars unknown.