It has been a very wet summer here in Maine and that has been bad news for most crops. One crop that likes the rain is the blueberry. So that’s the good news regarding blueberries. The bad news is that there is some fungus that has come from Canada that is infecting Maine’s blueberry plants. It is highly contagious plant-to-plant and the only way to keep it at bay is to burn the fields. It hasn’t become extremely widespread yet, but it may prove to be an issue in the future.
You would think that it would be easy to find a place to pick your own blueberries in Maine, but we found the opposite to be true. Maybe we just didn’t know who to ask or where to look. Dara actually found out about a place not too far away from us from one of her patients.
It was a very pretty day that we drove to the blueberry picking place. They also have raspberries to pick, but we didn’t want any of those. We were the only people there picking blueberries too, which was nice. The man tending the fields said it was “busy” in the morning. I had to take his word on that one. We picked 5 quarts with Quincy picking almost an entire one by himself. With some basic instructions, he was able to pick all by himself with only an occasional red berry tossed into the mix.
I’m not sure if you can tell from these pictures, but we did not pick the small blueberries – the so-called wild blueberries which are cultivated here in Maine. These were high bush blueberries. They had a nice mixture of medium sized berries and large berries to pick with the larger ones being sweeter. At only 4 bucks a quart, it was time and money well spent. Blueberry cobbler anyone?
I was going to put the pictures here, but decided to put them in the gallery with all the rest. You can find the pictures in the normal location.
We just finished off the second blueberry cobbler Doverly made from our trip to the blueberry fields here in Richmond, VA. It is a great annual tradition.
So let me ask you this – do you like it served hot with vanilla ice cream slowly melting on it or do you not care if it is cold?
Personally, I’ll eat it hot, cold, or room temperature.
For places to pick, go to http://www.pickyourown.org They have listings for every state of farms that you can pick your own fruit/veggies/flowers etc.
The one we went to is listed on the link you sent, but it is called Adams Strawberry Acres – no mention of the raspberries or blueberries. I guess they go by word of mouth for those.