For a variety of reasons, I've had the opportunity to harvest many different fruits and vegetables in my life. Sweet corn, strawberries, apples, peaches, cherries, potatoes, raspberries, carrots, and green beans all come right to mind. Sometimes for money, more often than not for personal use. When we were in Washington earlier this summer I had my first opportunity to pick blueberries.
We went to a U-pick'm blueberry farm, which was similar to strawberry farms. You're given a bucket and directed to the rows of blueberries that can be harvested that day. You pick what you want and pay, by weight, for what you picked. Blueberry plants are about 4-6 feet tall, and the blueberries grow in bunches, but they ripen independently. So you are individually picking the berries you want. Of course you can eat as many as you want (I found I needed to test 1 for every 10 I picked) and I dropped a lot because when they are ripe they come off pretty easily.
Fresh blueberries are fantastic and we had them on cereal, in pancakes, and just ate them by the handful. We didn't have to climb any ladders or crawl around on the ground to pick them.
Maybe the only possible drawback is what our grandson warned us: "If you eat too many blueberries, you'll get blue poop!".
We'd love to have you come to Maine sometime during the blueberry season...Maine blueberries are a a gourmand's delight. Smaller than other types of blueberry, they are exquisite on cereal, in pancakes, baked into pie or cobbler, and unique to Maine only during the season.
ReplyDeleteYUM!