Berry Picking

An outdoor family of five sent in some inspiring shots of their blueberry adventures in Arkansas. I couldn’t wait to have them share their experience with you. Becca Renfroe, the outdoor mamma of the fam, happily agreed to contribute a write up of their fun. Take a look… 

Happy Summer Solstice! This year, June 20th is the longest day of the year, and all that sunshine has been working overtime for you and your kids! June and July are the best months of the year to go berrying as a family. Grab some buckets, put on your grubbies, and find a berry farm near you!

If you want to take your kids berrying, I think blueberries are the perfect choice. They ripen in June, which means the weather isn’t unbearably hot in most states, especially in the morning. The bushes have no thorns, the berries have no pits or seeds, and they are large and grow very closely together on the ends of the branches. Perfect for kid-sized hands to pluck and pack a pail. And the difference between ripe and unripe berries is easy to spot, even for a child.

We used a great website called pickyourown.org to locate a blueberry farm (I use it in the fall when we want to pick our own pumpkins, too). Most local farms that sell fruits and vegetables will have their own buckets for you to use, but you may want to check in advance. While you’re checking, see what type of payment they accept (not many will take your debit or credit card, and some are strictly cash only), and ask if the fruit is ripe. We were going to visit a blueberry farm we’d been to before, but when I called the owner, she said all the ripe berries had been picked and it would take a few days for more fruit to ripen.

So this year, my husband, Allen, and I took our three kids berry-picking at McBooberry Farms, outside of Rogers, Arkansas. The best thing about McBooberry was that when we bought our blueberries, the owner gave us a stack of recipe cards and some tips for freezing blueberries when we left (for instance, I didn’t know that it’s better to freeze the berries unwashed, then wash them before you use them, to keep the berries from getting tough).

Brigham, my 3-year-old, carried a spring-loaded plastic knife in his bucket, in case there were any bears. (Perhaps we read Blueberries for Sal one too many times). Truman (almost seven) and I picked steadily through the five-acre patch, and he really got into it, trying to fill his gallon bucket before anyone. If it had been a race, however, Allen would have been dead last between the three of us.

Watching Allen fill his bucket was an interesting commentary on our different personalities. This was Allen’s first time picking blueberries, and he kept saying, ‘They’re so good! I’ve never really cared about blueberries but these are so good!’ But he wasn’t lagging behind because he was eating all he picked, he was lagging because he is painstakingly thorough. He did not want a single unripe spot on any of his blueberries. I observed him pick one berry at a time, turn it every way to see how ‘blue’ it was, and then either plunk it into his bucket or (gasp!) toss it aside! I mean, if there was the tiniest penumbra of a reddish color on one of his berries, it was not worthy. I admit, my bucket was mostly blue with patches of purplish-red, and Truman’s was two parts blue, one part red, and one part pink (Brig had about nine pinkish berries total by the end of the day) . . . but Allen’s bucket was impressively, entirely, and cobaltly blue. So, I guess we can conclude that I’m all about quantity and he is all about quality. Or at least, I’m all about speed, and he is . . . not.

Our 9-month-old, Mollie, got wheeled along in the stroller for a while, but then we took turns holding her while we picked, and she loved the taste of the blueberries as much as her daddy did. It was a perfect, sunny day for picking, with a nice breeze to keep us working happily.

We paid $10 per gallon for our blueberries, and they are the plumpest, sweetest berries I have ever tasted. Later that day, I was in the grocery store and checked the price of a pint of blueberries in the produce section: $3.78. Which translates to $30.24 per gallon (not including sales tax). The difference between the two can’t be measured just by quality or freshness . . . because my kids got to experience firsthand how food goes from a seed to a plant to a harvest. They got to feel and taste and smell and get dirty, instead of taking produce for granted—something that magically appears at a grocery store. Not only that—we had a fun, relaxed, and wonderful morning together as a family, continuing an annual tradition and making long-lasting memories . . . all for a mere $20.

Becca Renfroe is an at-home mom, a lover of all things outdoors, a freelance writer, and a baker of desserts. She and her family live in Northwest Arkansas.

 

Filed under Uncategorized |