Blueberry picking June 2009

On June 8th, we thought it must be time for the blueberries to be ripe so we somehow found the out of the way place we had visited last year. The owner told us that yes, it was time to pick and he would be putting the signs out that night so people could find him the next day.

We said we would be back early the next day and we were. At about 6:30 we started picking our first adventure of blueberry picking. This place has about 1,000 blueberry bushes and in the picture below you can see Denis starting to pick.


He is following the recommended method of attaching the gallon buckets to your belt, one on each side. I did that the first day, but the second day I opted to let Denis carry the buckets and me just pick into his buckets. They got too heavy and cumbersome for me. Note how conveniently high the bushes are -- no bending over to pick, which was great.


The rows are widely spaced and well maintained also. We could easily both work in the same area.

Here's how the berries look on the bush, clustered almost like grapes.

This is a bunch that is totally not ripe. They go from green, to pink, to blue.

I think it's a very pretty plant, and no thorns or stickers to deal with. The leaves remind me of a lilac bush.

When the buckets are filled, you take them to the little shed where your berries are bagged and you pay up. The cost is $10.00 per bucket (gallon) if you pick. Here is one of our gallons at home on the sink.

Next step is to dump the berries into the sink. We rinsed them twice, culling any bad ones or green ones, which we tried not to pick, but it happens.

There are many sizes of berries and you just pick what is ripe and move along. Sometimes they are small but sometimes they are big, like the one below that almost fills a teaspoon. They are the most fun.

Then we spread them all out on a towel to dry. This is one gallon spread out.

After they dry, we put them on either cookie sheets or our homemade cardboard trays and put them in the freezer to harden like little marbles.

Then we used our vacuum packer to bag them up for their sojourn in the freezer. Hopefully they will keep better that way than just putting them in regular freezer bags. This is four gallons stashed in the refrigerator freezer. We picked eight gallons over two days time. I think that will be enough for us to eat and share with friends, family and neighbors.