Got'ta start eating some blueberries!

[Thumper]

I have a buddy (bestest buds since we were 7-yrs. old) who has access to a local blueberry farm. Lynn and I met him at the gate yesterday morning for a little bit of blueberry picking. The farmer is getting ready to cut the bushes to the ground and plow them under and told us to take whatever we wanted. It seems he had only picked two weeks into his 3-month harvest season and the bottom fell out of the blueberry prices due to COVID-19. No Restaurants/Foodservice business, etc. to sell to. Damn! Another business failure due to this virus crap. Anyway, we picked three 6-gallon buckets of frigging berries yesterday. We dropped a bucket off to a friend who does a lot of baking and had plenty of freezer space, my buddy took a bucket and Lynn and I brought a bucket home. We kept a pile of berries to eat ... been munching since yesterday ... and froze the rest. Anyway, we had a great time, the weather was beautiful, "social distancing" was NO problem and we have berries up to our eyeballs! All-in-all, a fun day and a good excuse to get out of the house.

Here's a pic of Lynn doing her thing along with a 6-gal. bucket of berries in the back of my buddy's truck. My buddy called last night and said if we want any more, we're welcome to go back out anytime this week before the owner starts cuttin' 'em down.


berrieslynn.jpg berriesbucket.jpg

[DeputyDog]

Man, that’s a lot of berries.

Are you trying to outdo Posthole? He just double posts, you posted two identical threads.


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[Penguin]

I am really sad to see this. It takes a lot of work and time to get orchards and berry rows off the ground and producing. To see them just plowed under? Gads, the homesteader in me feels a pang.

But it is great to see you guys getting some tasty berries. That was thoughtful of the farmer. The largest orchard in southern WV shut down a couple years ago. It was decades old and a true local icon. They wouldn't even let people come in and get any of the young trees.... it is now a chicken farm. Gads.

Will

[Thumper]

Ha, yeah Deppity, SOMEBODY needs to give him a little competition. I’m taking a friend’s (elderly woman) car in for service today and am posting on my phone, which I very seldom do. To make matters worse, I dropped my truck off at her house to pick up her car and left my glasses in my truck. I remember I did an edit, but I must have hit a wrong button somewhere along the line. So ... I’m posting with my itty-bitty phone with no glasses, so I’m working by Braille this morning. The main difference is, P-hole has no excuse, but I do! 😁

[BarryBobPosthole]

Speaking of nuts and berries....wth happened with the orange crop this year? we’re getting plenty of oranges but they all taste sour. WTF, Jim? who’s in charge down there?
Bkb

[Thumper]

Most of the “eating” oranges come out of California or south of the border I believe. Most of the Florida oranges are juice oranges and go straight to the processing plants.

[BarryBobPosthole]

Yeah, I remember. We rented an old house right off Bayshore in Tampa for a year and had a couple orange trees. Some ugly ass oranges but man they were good.

BKB

[Thumper]

Willie, the farm isn’t going out of business really, they’re just losing their ass on this current crop. The way I understand it, once the season is over (berries are already dropping onto the ground), the normal procedure is to cut the bushes down to a couple feet high. They grow back to normal height by time they’re ready to produce next season’s crop. So it’s not like he’s turning the whole bush under and destroying the plants themselves.

[airbud7]

Some ugly ass oranges but man they were good.

You talking about Trump again I see......

[jb]

Growing up a few of my relatives had big blueberry farms, back then they were all picked by hand, I think we got 5 cents a quart.
Good summer work for kids. Now their farms are even bigger but they shake the bushes instead of picking. Wife makes a fantastic blueberry pie and her favorite is blueberry cobbler.
Sorry to see that farm go, I guess the don't store extra berries in refrigerated warehouses like we do up here.
Even shaking them to the ground and waiting for next years would be better than what he's doing, but then I not the farmer, nor do I know his motives.

[Thumper]

Yessir, people love those perfect looking Valencia’s etc. to eat. It’s like bananas, Lynn used to bring home tons of bananas from the hotel. If they showed the least amount of “browning”, people would refuse to eat them (they serve free breakfast) but they grab all the perfect “looking” fruit. Problem is, those are the nanners that really aren’t ripe yet. We didn’t mind at all!

[Thumper]

Bubba, I’m not sure of the economics, but I was told once the market falls below $2.00/pound (not sure of the measurement actually), it’s a loss to even pay to harvest them. Storage (especially cold storage) would create an even bigger loss.

[Thumper]

Ha ha ha! Maybe we should slow down our berry consumption just a tad. We’re both pooping purple today. 😄

[BarryBobPosthole]

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, people nowadays have forgotten what a banana ought to taste like. A bunch of bananas on a kitchen shelf used to smell up the whole kitchen.
And they say it won’t be long until they are gone because of.....viruses.

BKb

[Penguin]

Oh, well that is good to hear Jim. I thought he was going to plow them under and be done with it.

I am not a full time farmer. But even trying to get my garden and orchard up and running has taught me a lot about how difficult it is to make even a household version of each to produce. But it is also pretty rewarding and fun.

Will

[Thumper]

Yeah Willie. I just read my initial post and it is misleading. I believe (not sure) that they mulch the clippings and turn them back into the soil instead of “plowing” the plants themselves under as I stated. I’m just assuming that because the rows between the bushes looked like they were thick with mulch and since they cut the bushes short every season, I assumed that’s where the mulch comes from.

[johnboy]

Love bluesers! Sundays during berry season, back when I was a tad, meant a trip 'north' (northern Ontario) to pick wild blueberries. Great memories. I never thought about blueberries growing in Florida. Always thought of them as a cool country crop. Learn something every day.

[BarryBobPosthole]

June is blueberry month around here. We have some upickem places here but the best and sweetest are from the farms over in NW Arkansas. They run about ten degrees cooler there and the berries are sweeter.

Julie and I made the trek over there for many summer weekends back in the day. We may be due a trip to beaver lake this June if things get better soon.

BKB

[Thumper]

Lots of blueberry farms around here actually. In fact, we have one about 15 miles from the house that includes a winery. Of course, one of their specialties is blueberry wine. Most all the farms also have a u-pick option. One of our biggest crops right here in my area is strawberries.

[Thumper]

Well, we just returned from Sam's Club and they had a "good" price on blueberries. It makes OUR price look even sweeter!


blueberryprice.jpg