The state of the field, pre-picked berries, etc. 🫐

Some of you sweet folks have asked about pre-picked berries. While we do sometimes offer them, it’s not a regular thing. It’s usually something we do when we have a huge ripening surge and they aren’t getting picked fast enough to keep them from dropping. And we usually charge $8 lb for them because that’s a lot of effort. 😊

Right now, though, we do not have extras needing picking. This season has been VERY unusual for us, and I bet a lot of you are noticing it, too. Unusual -lots of super hot days that got the berries very excited and caused an early ripening (like 2 weeks early!!!) , followed by a ridiculous cold snap which essentially halted all ripening. We went from 100 lbs a day yield to 20 on the very next day. Crazy! And it wasn’t the fault of the pickers. I scoured the field, myself, and was shocked to see only green, pink and purple berries at the end of the day. (Tons of them, mind you, but just not a lot ready- at least to my taste. I cannot bear them to be tart.) There is an abundance just waiting for the right conditions.

This kind of dramatic stall has never happened to us before. We used to have kind of a lull between late and late late varieties, but not like this. Usually the berries replenish themselves throughout the day and evening and by next morning there are a bunch more ripe ones. Aaron over at Bee Blessed is having the same issue. Both of us stressing because we don’t like to cancel but also don’t want to waste anyone’s time and gas coming out for nothing. Anyway, we had to cancel all appointments for Friday. 😞

I had planned on picking some for our family for the 4th of July parties, but we could barely scrape together 10 lbs, and lots of them are still purple and are sitting on my kitchen counter in a brown paper bag with an apple and some ripe bananas to hopefully sweeten them up before tonight, lol. Here’s hoping for warmer weather today to get more ripened for Sunday’s pickers. Come on, sunshine!!!🌞

I have loved hearing the sound of kiddos in the field again! ❤️ It’s music to my ears. Seriously. I’d love to have a soundtrack of it playing in the background of my life all year round, as well as some recordings of the kids extempore songs they come up with:

“We are here, and blueberries are growing…all day, every day…” 🎵🎶

We have some adorable and talented kids! ❤️🫐

One new sound in the field I am not enjoying is this funny noise like footfall out there when things are quiet. Naturally, with our current deer issue I am on high alert for any in the field. As it turns out, the sound is from the berries falling on the black fabric when those birds are feasting. 😩 it took me awhile to figure out what it was coming from! And now I can’t unhear it. The sound of fruit being wasted. 🤦🏻‍♀️ The wildlife tax is pretty high this year.

BTW, when I was gone to New Mexico, a sweet little Dark-Eyed Junco built a beautiful little nest in one of my hanging fuchsias on the farm stand . I’m sure she thought it was a great spot to raise babies with nobody around. I can’t blame her- she didn’t know she built in what would become a busy walkway. I didn’t realize she was there until I started dead-heading the flowers and then she came out in a chirping flutter to chew me out. 😂 I have been keeping my distance, and giving her privacy, but I did manage to snap a photo of the nest while she was away. Idk how she’s going to keep calm with so many people coming and going, lol. If you hear her angrily chirping, you will know why. She’s a protective little mamma. Pretty sure there is a daddy, too.