Nothing defines summer for me more than fruit. We are developing a family tradition of fruit picking in the summertime, specifically blueberries!
The downside is that once you have eaten fat, juicy, sweet blueberries straight off the bush you will never look at them in the store the same.
They keep incredibly well in the freezer, so at $8/gallon for pick your own blueberries, we normally try for 7 bags in the freezer by the end of the season. This means we can eat a gallon a month from about August to February. This generally gets me through the winter "blues".
A gallon of blueberries weights about 6.5 lbs or around 3 kg.
So here are some inside hints about blueberry picking in the South (trust us, we did it wrong, so you could do it right!).
Take these things with you:
1. Hat (preferably broad brimmed). This keeps off the sun and insects (eg ticks)
2. Sun cream, Insect spray
3. Old sneakers, or ones you can dry out. Ankle to mid calf socks (depending on fashion pain)
4. Water bottle
Do this when you get there....
1. Line everyone up and douse the shoes and socks and clothing with insect repellant. Put a light spray on exposed skin. Make sure you have the spray on the legs and shorts and shirt cuffs and your hat. This will help keep off chiggers. Avoiding long grass will go a long way to avoiding chiggers. As you can see by the lack of ankel high socks in the above photos, these country kids don't think they will walk in poison ivy, or get chiggers...
2. Apply sun cream to faces and arms.
3. Hydrate - drink water before starting!
4. Watch out for poison ivy.
Don't worry about all this mention of chiggers, ticks and poison ivy. By taking these preventative measures we rarely get any of them.
Remember to check with the owner if he uses sprays on the blueberries, quite often they can be grown organically. Whenever you get home with your gallon sacks of blueberries, you should be sure not to wash them (if they are organically grown) before putting them in the freezer - that way they don't clump together.
Or, if they are not organically grown, or you feel the need to wash, lay them out on trays to dry before putting them in the freezer. We mainly just eat ours straight from the freezer - scoop a cup out of the original gallon bag and sit in the sun (or aircondintioning) and eat them. A cup of frozen blueberries are a great midmorning snack break from homeschooling.
If you are intent on using them to cook with, you can go ahead and bag them up in 3 or 4 cup ziplock bag quantities (depending on the receipes) before putting them in the freezer.
There are many upsides of picking blueberries for your kids. Some places don't mind if you eat some blueberries as you pick - this is definitly a plus for the kids. The last time we picked we got to see a baby bird (sparrow we think) sitting VERY still on a blueberry branch, with it's parents chirping at it to keep still and trying to distract us. We saw a very pretty spider web. There are lots of insects at the blueberry patch we pick at. The kids get to find out what it would be like to be a fruit picker in the summer heat (reality check). And most importantly, we picked about 2 gallons of blue berries in about 2 hours (probably the same quantity was eaten)!
Happy picking!
Aussie Kim
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