This is the sign I've been waiting to see since about this time last year. I absolutely love the natural progression from strawberry season right on into blueberry/blackberry season, and I really love living somewhere that makes taking full advantage of said seasons so stinkin' easy. For some reason we only made it out to pick strawberries once this year. I'm not exactly sure what I was thinking. I had these grand ideas that we would pick gallons and gallons of strawberries and we would eat them for days and then we'd freeze so many gallon-sized baggies that we'd still be eating yummy local strawberries in the dead of winter. Umm, yeah. We already blew through all two of those gallon-sized frozen baggies of strawberrries. And it's only July. And strawberry season is over. And I've purposed in my heart to not allow that to happen with the blueberries.
So before my niece (who stays with us every summer and who's not allowed to go and get too cool for me by the time next summer rolls around) and my mom (who's pretty cool herself, but never too cool for a trip to see her grandkids) ventured back to central Florida we decided to put them to work. It didn't take long for us to figure out why those little pint-sized containers of blueberries are so expensive in the grocery store. It takes a loonngg time to fill a bucket with blueberries! (It might have something to do with the fact that there was a lot more smacking than ker-plunking going on...) It may take a while to gather any sizable amount, but it's certainly worth the effort. Not only are these berries un-sprayed, but they are really inexpensive when you pick them yourself - a whole gallon for $8! That's a lot of blueberries.
We've gone back for more twice now and let me just tell you, these blueberries are amazing. We've pretty much been having blueberry everything lately-muffins, pancakes, oatmeal and even my first attempt at a blueberry pie (which far exceeded my husbands expectations, thankyouverymuch.) And little Benjamin has decided they're his favorite food thus far (he's very, very smart).
So, the first couple of times we grabbed our buckets and headed out to pick it was like an adventure. The kids pretended to be farmers harvesting their crops, we talked about what great fun it was going to be to have our own blueberries one day and how great it will be to go out and pick berries for our breakfast on Saturday mornings. They didn't even mind the heat so much because they knew they were picking for a pie and they had never had blueberry pie before and Travis was anxious to prove to me that blueberry pie couldn't even hold a candle to apple pie. So they picked. And picked. And picked some more. (And ate a lot more while they picked...) But now we have two weeks left of blueberry season and nothing in the freezer to show for all of that picking and, well, my crew is getting harder to motivate.
As for the blueberry pie, once Travis tasted it I could see the inner struggle he was faced with. Should he stand by his original insistance that nothing could trump an apple pie, or should he confess that his daddy had been right all along about the wonder of a blueberry pie? He decided that he could have several favorites, one for each season. Blueberry pie wins for summer.
Ooh... maybe the promise of yummy blueberry pie in the dead of winter would motivate them to get back at it and fill my freezer? I think they could probably be persuaded...