Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Blueberries


I don’t know about you, but I love blueberries. I eat them every morning on cereal no matter the kind or brand. Blueberries make it better. I eat them in pancakes with a quick blueberry syrup made in the microwave. I eat them in smoothies with blueberry yogurt and almond milk. I eat them in quick breads with pecans or walnuts. I toss them on salads no matter what else is in it, and pie? Well, yummy, but not so much anymore. Too many calories.

When we first moved to Florida in 1978, I was introduced to blueberry bushes at Hainesworth Farms by Jim’s brother and sister-in-law. They had been picking a few times before and raved about how delicious they were. Sometime in May blueberries ripened, and we got a phone call to join them on a Saturday morning. As we drove the back roads northeast of Gainesville, we caught up on family news and looked forward to picking several pounds of the luscious fruit. The farm handed out family recipe cards for all kinds of blueberry concoctions and even sold young blueberry plants. We stored bags of them in our freezer. Then, Jim’s and our relatives’ interest waned. After all, it is a hot sweaty job. But my love of blueberries never diminished. So I found a new partner.

Picking blueberries with Aunt Fanny was a real adventure I never wanted to miss. Toward the end of May or the first of June I could expect to get a phone call letting me know local blueberries at a certain farm were ripe and abundant, and would I want to be picked up around 8 tomorrow morning? Absolutely! We traveled to Monteocha Farms, to Lake Santa Fe, to Earlton, and many others that I have forgotten the names of.

Aunt Fanny usually had a couple of other ladies with her, but she always kept the front passenger seat reserved for me. Containers were stowed in her car trunk as well as ropes or belts to loop through the handles of the farm’s supplied buckets and then tied or buckled around our waists, leaving our hands free for picking. Once we arrived at our destination, the owner directed us to the next in line picking spot, always in the hot sun and getting hotter by the minute.

Fanny with her straw hat and long sleeves was a fast picker, outpacing me two to one, but I didn’t pay much attention, just enjoying the company and munching a few berries as I picked, making sure they were good and sweet, which they always were. Like the others I started picking at chest level, but if I didn’t want to be admonished, I eventually had to bend and reach for the berries, picking the bush clean of ripe berries before advancing on to the next bush up the row. Sometimes the bushes might be next to a pine forest and depending on the sun, some shade might come my way, but this was unusual, and within a short period of time, I and the others were hot and sweaty. We dare not take a break because the sun was advancing in the sky, and soon, remaining in the field would be unbearable. At some point, upon agreement, we would have to be satisfied with what we had picked, grab up our filled buckets, and return to weigh and pay.

I never picked blueberries with a group that Aunt Fanny was not part of. When she passed away, I bought bags of berries already picked from a farm near Newberry named Maid Marian’s. Of course, they had been cooled, and I never got that warm juicy flavor of the ones fresh from the bush. Not picking with others was just a sentimental thing. Aunt Fanny was a good friend, and I always think of her when the blueberries are ripe.


I am thinking about blueberries today because this year’s stash is dwindling. The berries I am eating this morning were shipped from New Jersey. I buy most of my blueberries at Publix now, and bags stored in my freezer barely last until year’s end. Then I must go to the frozen bags of fruit at the end of the ice cream isle. But blueberries are blueberries and I love them any old way! Here are a few of those old recipes.