07/20/2021
Hello lovely people! For the next couple weeks we're doing a limited variation of u-pick we are calling "we-pick" where we ask you to follow our picking and field maintenance strategies, and a trained picker picks in the same area with you. We're thinking we'll invite up to 5 people or small groups at a time, at either 11am or 6pm by appointment. The price is $3 a pound.
The basics of our picking strategy: 1) cupping your hands under a cluster and gently picking the ripe berries, 2) avoid touching the berries as much as possible so as to leave as much bloom as possible on the blueberries - bloom is the thin protective layer on the outside of blueberries that gives them their lighter color, and 3) pick all the ripe berries off one plant at a time. Other management strategies are: 1) pick up or squish any berries that have fallen. This helps to ensure that they are not habitat for the invasive fly that has come into the area in the last few years, 2) put any unwanted - too mushy, too dry and hard, etc, berries in a separate compost bucket, and 3) put mummy berries in the compost bucket as well - this is a blueberry fungal infection, which causes blueberries to become off-colored, usually white or beige-y, and shrunken. We bury our compost so that fly-affected berries and mummy berries decompose without spreading the fly and the fungus.
Edit: Please call us at 541-689-1836 if you are interested, and we can schedule times!
Thanks everyone!
