I spent the weekend at my husband's home in Maine (we go up there every other weekend, he's building an addition on it). The blueberries are in. He doesn't have a lawn in the front yard, he's got wild Maine lowbush blueberries, and they're covered! I posted a couple pictures over in alt.binaries,pictures gardens....boy, are they delish!
I'm blue with envy! I used to pick over a hundred quarts in a good year when I lived in northern MN. It was one of my favorite summer recreations. Other people golfed; I picked wild blueberries. My best results were twenty-five quarts in one afternoon, but that occurred during an extremely cool, wet summer. Most of the time I was satisfied to pick ten quarts in an afternoon. I used to carry along a small frying pan and strip the berries into it and pour them from there into my pail. When I arrived home, I'd pour the berries from one pail into another in front of a window fan, which blew away most of the leaves and chaff. It was an easy way to clean them. Anyway, have fun and enjoy the great taste of those wild berries.
John
Isn't it your home also?
I love Maine and hope to live there one day myself! Preferably the Bar Harbor area so I can go galumphing thru Acadia NP all the time.
LeeAnne
My wife had the habit of giving most of the berries I picked away to relatives because she complained that we didn't have any more room in the freezer. We've now run out of blueberries since our move, and I heard her mention the other day that she would love some blueberry pancakes.
BTW, I forgot to add that we never washed the berries before freezing. We had a wooden box with a coarse screen in the bottom that we rolled them back and forth over after pouring them in front of the fan. It let most of the small, green berries fall through and made it simple to pick out the stems and berries that came off in clusters. Of course, most of the berries I picked came from swampy areas far removed from any industrial area.
Now if I had been able to avoid being carried away by the mosquito and black fly residents of the area...
John
I also love the Bar Harbor area. My family drove our RV up to Maine one year when I was in high school and we camped at this one campgroud (don't remember where) and she went out early in the morning and picked these berries in hopes that they were blueberries. She brought them back inside, washed them and made us all fresh blueberry pancakes for breakfast. They were the best ones I've ever had. We are planning another trip up there next summer, this time with my husband, my sister and her boyfriend and our parents. I can't wait. I love to spend all day looking in the tidal pools and climbing on the rocks. Also love to just watch the waves crash in and watch the lobster boats working. Kirsten in Ohio, who would rather be in Maine right now.
"Annie" expounded:
Oh, I forgot about the wild strawberries! They were a bonus, they grow in the driveway, of all places, up in front of the garage. So I had fresh blueberries and fresh 'fraise du bois' (I know I mangled that) on my cereal last weekend. The strawberries were so fragrant and flavorful! Not nearly enough of them, though.
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