Blueberry Picking (July 27, 2013)

(Photos by Hanna; comments by Lori)

July and August are blueberry season in Michigan, and we're known for having some of the best blueberries in the country! Of course we had to go pick some for ourselves! We went to Reender's Blueberry Farms near Grand Haven, a favorite spot of ours for many years.

Reenders has a fantastic country-style store, filed with homemade jams, syrups, salsas . . . everything you can imagine made from a blueberry. Even blueberry coffee!

We could have used a cup of that blueberry coffee. See how we're huddled so close together? It's not just to take nice pictures, but because it was SO COLD!!! We were shivering, and we hadn't even started picking blueberries yet!

 

We finally headed out to the fields. The first thing we had to do was tie on the buckets. This left our hands free to quickly pick many of the gorgeous berries!

Some bushes were filed with berries, but others had been well-picked by the time we got there. And in the last picture, you can see there are LOTS of berries . . . but they will take another week or so to ripen. And it's too cold for us to wait that long!

 

We all got started picking berries. You could hear the "plunk plunk" as the berries hit the bucket, and soon the buckets started to fill. Well, SOME of the buckets were filling . . .


 . . . while others seemed mysteriously empty. Hmm, what could be the problem?

Oh, HERE'S the problem! Hyunkwan decided that he likes eating the blueberries more than picking them! 

 

 After about fifteen minutes, this was the difference between Lori's bucket and Hyunkwan's bucket!

Still, it seemed that Hyunkwan needed a break from all the hard work.

 Hanna was working harder though.

 

 

Hanna, like the rest of us, couldn't resist these big, ripe blueberries?!

 

In the end it was worth all of the work (and the cold!) to get this many delicious blueberries! We have many plans for eating them, making pies and jams 

and smoothies . . Yum!

Goodbye, Reenders--we'll see you next year!