Monday, July 20, 2009

Blueberries!

At the beginning of the summer, I had this goal of visiting several U-pick farms in the area and loading up my deep freezer with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and cherries to snack on and cook with all winter long. Well, last week, I realized that I somehow completely missed strawberry season here in northern Indiana! Not about to allow myself to be complete failure, I vowed to go blueberry picking this week. So that's what we did this morning, bright and early.

At the recommendation of several of my Facebook friends, we went to the Blueberry Ranch nearby, an organic farm that grows five different varieties of blueberries for the community to pick. We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day -- both in terms of weather and the ripeness of the blueberries. The sky was a bright, clear blue, a heavy blanket of dew was covering the blueberry fields, and thanks to this chilly summer we're having, it was so cool we hardly broke a sweat. And forget about those minuscule, bitter, shriveled berries you can buy in your local mega-mart for a premium price: in an hour and a half, we picked over 30 pounds of plump, succulent, candy-like fruit for a mere $1.50/pound!
Of course, Ian ate waaaaay more blueberries than he actually placed in his little bucket, even though we tried to deter him by playing counting games with the berries, but he had a blast. One of his favorite parts (according to him during our nightly "What was your favorite thing today" game) was riding on the tractor to and from the field where we were assigned our bushes. On the way back, though, he and Eric initially missed getting on the trailer before the tractor started moving with me on it, and had to chase it down a bit. This was a little traumatizing for Ian. I'd like to think he was worried that the tractor was taking me away, but it's probably more realistic that he was upset at the thought of not getting to ride on it himself!

We all made it safely back to the barn, though, where we paid for our loot and were enticed by all sorts of organic blueberry yumminess: blueberry jam, blueberry blossom honey, blueberry BBQ sauce, and blueberry salsa.

I think we're going to try to go back later this week for another 10 pounds or so, just to make sure we have enough to last us through all the cobbler, pie, sorbet, ice cream, pancakes, and muffins I'm going to be making, let alone the frozen blueberry snacks! Yum!

-

No comments:

Post a Comment