People who pick wild huckleberries in the mountains of North Idaho and Montana often keep mum about where they find the elusive fruit.

Now, huckleberry fans can get at least a taste of the mountain treat if they turn off U.S. 95 in Coeur d'Alene and park in front of Silver Lake Mall, at 200 W. Hanley. Tucked next door to the Sears store is a new family-run business, called Huckleberry Thicket, that includes a gift store, bakery, and cafe.

While opening the Coeur d'Alene outlet in mid-June, Huckleberry Thicket owner Marla Hedman also launched a branch of her second business there, Larchwood Farms, a commercial kitchen and warehouse operation making huckleberry food products that it sells and distributes wholesale to other stores.

Larchwood produces a line of 100-percent huckleberry fruit jams, jellies, preserves, and syrups sweetened with organic evaporated cane juice, as well as sugar-free natural fruit products.

About 75 percent of Larchwood's business is as a wholesale supplier of huckleberry treats and other natural fruit food products for several U.S. gift stores and natural food stores, including Pilgrim's Market, in Coeur d'Alene, and Huckleberry's Natural Market, in Spokane.

"We're in quite a few shops, actually, mainly in gift stores and health grocery stores," Marla says. "We have some stores we supply in California and the Midwest."

Ellisa Hedman, Marla's daughter, helps run the Coeur d'Alene operation along with her brother, Larch Hedman, who oversees the kitchen and warehouse. "We do everything huckleberry," Ellisa says. "Everything we make is all natural and organic."

Ellisa also falls a bit mum when asked about where they find their huckleberries, other than to say the berries comes from North Idaho and, mainly, the northwest Montana region near the Hedmans' original home of Trout Creek, Mont., where they plan to keep a residence and small commercial kitchen. In 1981, the state's Legislature proclaimed Trout Creek as "Huckleberry Capital of Montana."

As far as a quantity of huckleberries the two businesses go through, Marla also declines to say, but she says they buy about 90 percent of the raw berries they use now from others who pick them.

"We used to pick them all," Marla says. In the past, Larchwood Farms also has sold the raw berries to customers, and it probably will continue to do so, she adds, although 2011 doesn't look like it will be a bounty year.

At the Coeur d'Alene mall, the Hedmans are leasing 9,500 square feet of space, a majority of which is in a remodeled area where a Granny's Buffet outlet previously operated. The Hedmans now use it for a large gift store, bakery case, espresso bar, warehouse, kitchen, and restaurant. In a separate part of the mall, they also have a smaller Huckleberry Thicket store that carries only gifts and year-round Christmas items.

This time of year, the Hedman family also is focused on operating an annual huckleberry food vendor booth at a series of Inland Northwest fairs, including this week's North Idaho Fair in Coeur d'Alene, Pig Out in the Park in Spokane Aug. 31-Sept. 5, and the Spokane County Interstate Fair Sept. 9-18.

The Hedmans' booth sells huckleberry ice cream, cheesecake, lemonade, and shakes.

"We've done the two fairs here for about 12 years, and Pig Out in the Park for about three years," Ellisa says. "People just call it the huckleberry booth."

This year, formally, the family plans to install a Huckleberry Thicket sign on the food booth, to connect it with the Coeur d'Alene site. It participates in a total of about nine shows and fairs, Marla says, including the annual Huckleberry Festival in Trout Creek, others around the Northwest, and one natural organic food show in California.

Marla says her goal is to make the new Coeur d'Alene shop have a hometown feel, and eventually to open a full-scale restaurant serving breakfasts and lunches.

"We make specialty pancake mixes, and we want to be able to serve them and do a good breakfast and specials every day, and we may even stay open a few nights for dinner a little bit down the road."

"We like to cook and that makes a difference," she adds. "Everything is made from scratch."

In addition to a large selection of huckleberry food products and huckleberry candy, the Coeur d'Alene store carries custom-made gift baskets, Northwest-themed gifts, cabin decor, T-shirts and sweatshirts, pottery, jewelry, and handmade quilts. Gift items also include popular figurines under artist Jim Shore's label.

"We have a Christmas year-round gift area," Marla adds. "We love wildlife and we promote a lot of wildlife products."

Some of the bakery items sold now from the cafe, which has seating for visitors, include huckleberry pies and scones. While the huckleberry food line is the most popular in gift stores, Marla says Larchwood has another group of products that include organic low-sugar fruit jams such as marionberry, raspberry, apricot, sweet cherry, boysenberry, and strawberry-rhubarb.

While Marla declines to disclose specific revenue figures, she says this year's sales are good.

"This is the best jam year we've had," she says. "People may not be spending a lot on gifts, but they're spending it on food."

To bring in a second income, Marla founded Larchwood Farms in Trout Creek in 1986, the year her son, Larch, was born. Marla says that her husband during those early years joked that the huckleberry jam she cooked up was Montana's purple gold.

"For all my family and friends, we made huckleberry jam for Christmas, and everyone just loved it, so we decided we'd make it and sell it," Marla says. "We've been in Trout Creek for 30 years."

She made the line of huckleberry jams and preserves until recent years when Larch took over most of the food production, and she now oversees the overall businesses. She eventually plans to turn ownership of the businesses over to her children.

She says the family recently decided to move much of the operation to Coeur d'Alene because of the larger population base in the region. She plans to keep residences in both Trout Creek and Coeur d'Alene, at least near term.

Ellisa adds that gaining a larger business footing in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area makes sense, because people here appreciate and seek out the mountain fruit. She also says the family buys huckleberries at $30 a gallon from pickers who harvest them in this region and in Montana.

"Huckleberries are just as big here," she says. She smiles when asked about how people find their own stashes of huckleberry.

"No one shares their picking spot, ever," Ellisa says. "It's kind of like your fishing spot. It's a Northwest berry that grows wild. They're not commercially produced. The one way it's found is up in the mountains."

And now, for at least a sample, it's a huckleberry of a chance near Sears as well.