Blueberry Picking

About the size of a pearl, the color of a dark blue crayon with a dusty cover, and a taste that pops with sweetness in your mouth when your teeth apply just enough pressure, blueberries are awesome.

While living in Texas we never took advantage of picking our own blueberries. Apparently they are really good there. We had friends who went and said it was great.

Yet, here we live next to Michigan, where it is known for its blueberries. I wasn't going to let another opportunity to gather fresh "homegrown" fruit pass me by. I found out about the Blueberry Ranch that is just a 20-minute drive from our house that grows organic blueberries. Nana and I loaded up the girls and headed for this farm to, as Zoë said, harvest some blueberries.
We tried to encourage other friends to join us, but either we picked a bad day for them, or they just weren't as excited about fresh-picked blueberries.

At any rate, after waiting a bit for people to join us we decided to head on out to the field and get some blue in our white buckets.


Each little girl had her own bucket and carried it with gusto as we followed directions to get to the un-picked blueberry bushes. We waited to be shown exactly where to start picking. After we were given our row of bushes, many of which were taller than my head (but well under six feet).

It was fun finding just the right plump almost-purple-they-were-so-blue berries and dropping them with a dull thud into the white buckets. Zoë was a champion picker, and was never far behind in how full her bucket was compared to Nana and her mom. Megan started eating as many as she got in her bucket and proclaimed that the "red" ones were sour, but tasted just as good.

Now, what about Miranda? She picked about 5 berries and dropped them in the bucket. She handed the bucket to her mom, and proceeded to pick out the berries and eat them. She then realized that dropping them in the bucket was not a way to be efficient, so she started picking the berries off the bush and popping them in her mouth. YUM! It made me doubly glad that these were organic berries!



She was quite full of blueberries by the time we were finished picking about 45 minutes later. Finished more because Zoë and Megan were restless than Nana and I felt like we had enough berries!


Before we left, we were joined by some good friends of ours that we've had fun playing with this summer- the Arick's. Tara is due only 10 days before I am, and she and I have had fun being pregnant together. Nana took a "belly shot" of us before we headed off to weigh our bellies, I mean berries!

Back at the barn, we loaded our bags of blueberries on the scale. Although the printout read about six pounds, I'm sure that with Miranda's and Megan's help (i.e. the ones that they ate), we had close to seven or eight pounds. At any rate, we were glad to be able to dine on blueberries for lunch and dinner that night!



And maybe have blueberry pie, or blueberry crepes, and blueberry pancakes, and blueberry. . .