BLUEBERRY TRADITIONS

Summer is well underway in these northern lands. Hot and muggy days with nights often rumbling and booming with thunder and lightning confirm the knowledge that the very welcome warm season is here, with nearby woods and lanes bursting at the seams with the sweet heavy smell of ripening blueberries.

An assortment of berry farms thrive in this area and a close eye is kept on them this time of year with families having come to have ‘their’ favorite one which they frequent for their picking -year after year.

Any day now, a hand-made sign, generally a plank of flat timber, will appear at the entrance to berry farms’ alleys, bearing the white home-made letters: PYO

 Pick Your Own... the preferred mode for harvesting the little gems. Farmers like it because it saves them money, and people like it because they get to pick each berry just at the peak of perfection -sweet and succulent. Kids also like it because they love hands-on experiences, being able to eat as much as they can pick, thinking they’re getting away with something, as they come back from the fields with telltale sticky hands and purpl-y mouths.

My family looks forward to this adventurous early and cool summer morning. Our very young daughter has enjoyed the picking routine from early on. Gathering her beach pail she proceeds to reach the bright blueberries nestled in low bushes -picking only the very best ones, her tiny hands aloft the branches- to select just the perfect one … as I have shown her. Amazing how a three year old will learn and accept knowledge unconditionally. And I know she loves the fact that aside from the instant gratification of delicious mouthfuls, her mommy can incorporate the little blue things into some yummy jams, oatmeal and ice cream.

Fresh and biological blueberries are providing our young family with bursts of health plus the wonderful experiences that are so fast becoming extinct. Here in Vermont, blueberry picking is thought of as a tradition known for enhancing family togetherness.

Come autumn we also join in other important traditions of the area which include apple picking along with pure maple syrup collected solely in small quantities by a handful of independent maple farmers and artisans. We usually bring our own jars to receive the pure amber elixir soon after it’s prepared. It is an amazing thing to witness some of the larger maple trees in sugar-woods as some are over 200 years of age! But I digress.

Getting back to this warm summer day we are reaffirming our second annual family tradition of blueberry picking and look forward to the fall apple and maple crops.

At this time of year I'm always inspired by the stacked brimming pints of berries and other local produce to be found at roadside stands and hidden farms along country roads in this bountiful northern region.

For us, berry picking and produce gathering have come to define a traditional summer adventure, making for a great mid-summer family outing -along with the chores of washing the produce carefully and letting it air-dry flat on a layer of clean dish cloths on the kitchen counter.

I’m told that Native Americans were the earliest ‘pickers’ trading the wild berries with the newly arrived peoples of Europe; a job greatly changed these days as commercial farms employ a thoroughly migrant-worker labor force. @7/1970