With their intoxicating juices and all-too-short season, berries are the essence of summer. And In July, Greenbank loves the loganberry

Greenbank Farm lured hundreds of people to what was arguably its largest, most successful Loganberry Festival last weekend. Like bees to berries, festival goers buzzed about tasting wines, walking the fields, sprawling in the sun and listening to music.

“It’s so relaxing and enjoyable,” Maggie Mallet said as she sipped a taste of a Sorensen Cellars red wine.

“You meet the best people at these places,” a woman commented from the shade of an umbrella.

The syrupy scent of pies and snowcones mingled nicely witharomas of kielbasa links smeared with sweet-hot mustard.

Loganberry-lemonade sold briskly as did the raspberry-, marionberry-, strawberry- and blackberry-lemon ades.

Annie Horton toted salvers of pastries for speed-eating contests.

“It’s a wonderful day,” Horton said adjusting her bright “Pie Girl” sash. “I’m dancing, running into friends all over.”

Horton thoroughly enjoyed her “official” duties.

“The kids are so funny eating the pies,” she said as she prepared for another round.

At the wine-tasting tent, volunteers dispensed sips of vintages from numerous wineries on the Olympic Loop which stretches from Mount Baker to Greenbank and west to Port Angeles.

“Folks from ‘Sunset Magazine’ were here Saturday,” Bob Moliter reported from the tent’s shade. “A photographer was running around setting up every shot just so.”

Dogs cooled off with lemonade and lots of water — particularly when they splashed in the pond. Greenbank Farm’s venerable Farmall tractor was a favored posing spot for photos.

Despite the sun, folks were interested in alpaca sweaters probably because Dick Whittick had a pen of newly-shorn ‘pacas for petting. .As it was down-to-earth Greenbank, Whittick had bags labeled “alpaca poop” for sale. Before they headed home, people bought berry wines, jams and syrups to remind them of the Pacific Northwest’s deep summer this winter.