Blueberry Picking

Alas, I am a bad blogger. I've not kept up with my posts lately, and it appears that the summer is quickly fading into memories. Let's take a walk back through a hot, sunny morning. On a cloudy, drippy day like today, it's good to think of summer's warmth.

We've never been berry picking until this year. With our decision to eat more local foods, stocking up, preserving, and freezing have been some of our prime summertime activities. We started off easy. Blueberry picking is simple and fun, and there are no thorns.

Blueberries start coming into season in July, and they keep producing right up through the end of September most years. The plants in our yard are still giving us a few berries each week, but our harvesting at Bryant Bluberry Farms in Arlington was in the last few weeks of their prime blueberry season.

You can see how many unripened berries were still hanging on the bushes, but the ripe ones fell into our buckets with a satisfying thunk.

Twenty pounds later, we headed for home with dreams of blueberry muffins, pancakes, scones, and more.

The best part of harvesting blueberries is snacking as you go. Once you get them home, rinse them off, pat them dry, and bag them for the freezer. Blueberries, unlike other types of berries, don't stick together when frozen, so it's easy to grab as many as you want without having to thaw a whole batch.