All photos are my own.
Some of you may recall that my neighbor up the road is starting up a you-pick blueberry farm. At church the Sunday before last, he told me that he isn't going to open it up to the public this year or next (since the plants are still so small), and that we could come up and pick all we want for free.
I'm averaging ~45 minutes to fill each gallon bucket.
Free? Heck YEAH!! I assumed there wouldn't be a lot of berries since he only put the plants in last year and this year. Oh, how wrong I was! So lately I've been on a (mostly) one-woman campaign to harvest acres upon acres of blueberries before they spoil. I'm losing the war, but I'll go down fighting--braving the sun, heat and bugs in order to freeze enough blueberries for the rest of the year!
Prepping these for the freezer.
To freeze:
I spread the berries out on my largest baking sheets, more or less in a crowded single layer, and pick through them to remove debris, any with worms, or those that are squished or under/overripe. Those go into the "chicken scraps bowl" to be enjoyed by the appreciative chickens :) Once the berries are frozen, I pack them into gallon sized Ziplock freezer bags.
Upon advice from a friend (and sad experience the first year we went blueberry picking) I do not wash the berries first. If you wash them before freezing, they turn to mush if you try to thaw them later. So I freeze them without washing them, and gently rinse them after thawing instead.
But what of my darling helpers? you may ask.
Oh, I tried taking them along the first couple of times. It was somewhat successful.
The plants are a perfect kid size, but it's backbreaking work for me since I have to either bend or squat the entire time.
Pixie is a very good little berry picker, as long as it's not too hot outside.
Unfortunately, she kept trying to show off how many she had picked by holding up the bucket like this--and accidentally dropped the entire thing into the long grass--twice. It was nearly full the second time, too, so digging a gallon of spilled berries out of the weeds greatly taxed my patience.
If you read my post about strawberry picking, then you know what Little Man was doing the whole time...
As far as I'm concerned, he can eat all he wants.
There are 3 types of berry pickers, from my observations.
- The Hares: Those that cruise rapidly along the rows, grabbing just the easy to reach berries on each bush. Pixie and the Husband fall into this category.
- The Tortoises: Those (ahem, me) who park by one bush, and meticulously work it over from one end to the other, stripping every single ripe berry before moving on to the next bush.
- The Birds: Those who pick solely to consume. Little Man, of course!
Within those 3 categories are the 2 subcategories of the Gossipers and the Daydreamers. Pixie is going to be a Gossiper, because she chatterboxes away nonstop the whole time. Me, I like to zone out into La La Land and do the solitude thing (and eavesdrop on Gossipers lol).
So I'm a daydreaming tortoise. Which type are YOU? :)
Back to my kiddo helpers. They did great when the temps were still in the 70's and the sky was overcast; but when it shot up into the mid and high 80's along with blazing sunshine, I discovered that small children's desire to berry pick evaporated (and I don't blame them, because it was pretty miserable in the unshaded field). They went with me, but instead of helping, they ended up playing on my neighbor's truckload piles of damp sawdust (talk about a hot mess) and pitching all of Pixie's berries to three feral roosters that have been hanging around.
From the other end of the field, I eyed them and debated whether to say something, but I decided to let kids be kids since they weren't hurting anything, and the roosters weren't being aggressive. But the kids were officially "fired" that afternoon, and I've been soldiering on alone since then. (I actually enjoy the opportunity for solitude, so no complaints here.)
I'm not freezing all the berries. Pixie's spilled berries had to be rinsed of all the junk stuck to them...
So I made a big batch of jam, as well as cast iron skillet cobbler. YUM!
This was fun, but I'm waiting for cold weather to break out the frozen berries and make more jam--the house got way too hot.
Stay tuned for a future post on my cobbler making experiments...
Thanks to @walkerland for inspiring me to dust off my skillet.
It's been a lot of work, and my body aches, but considering what a pint of blueberries sells for at Kroger during the off season, I calculated that I've picked about $255 worth at the grocery store price. And I'm not done yet!!