Blueberry Pickin'

It's blueberry season!!!

I'm still bummin' that raspberry season was basically a flop, but my favorite thing about u-picking this year is that Craig is coming along on all our adventures!  He LOVES the enormous bounty that results from our little farm trips and so I've asked him to come along to get the job done faster and help relieve me when the kids get tired/hot.  I think he prefers to pick strawberries, but he was great this past Saturday about making a boys vs. girls picking game out of our morning.  ;)

We visited Erie Orchard (same as last year) and headed out early to beat the heat.  The forecast was to reach the 90's again this day and we were lucky enough to only hit 76 while we were picking.  Still, that seemed hot amongst the bushes with very little wind.

I always plan on the kids eating their fill of whatever we're picking, but Erie Orchard also has a fantastic store and bakery where you check in and out, with the best homemade apple fritters around.  So they split a banana before we left and we bought fritters upon arrival, before picking.  Once again, I highly recommend sunscreen, wet wipes and water bottles whenever u-picking, especially if little ones are involved.

We brought our quart size containers from last year to recycle them for another picking season as well as the large, shallow box that we used for strawberries to serve as a "tray".  After check in, you drive back through the fields and they have marked signs for their various u-pick areas.  This is the blueberry section all surrounded by netting to protect from birds.  They do have bushes outside the netting too, but this seemed to be where they were directing people this morning and the picking was good, so we followed suit.

This is the fullest the kids' cartons ever got because most of their picking went into their bellies.  :)

Startin' to get hot... time for a pony tail!

At this point, the kids were done.  Exactly the reason I brought Craig along!  He took them back to the Jeep and they watched Leap Frog Number Ahoy in the air conditioning while I picked the last quart.  We finished with four heaping quarts.

I wasn't going to push my luck and ask for time to pick lots of peaches and plums... but both were available for u-pick too, so we at least drove back through those orchards and I picked only maybe 10 or so of each.  They're small and sweet and delicious.

Plums

Peaches

I've only made muffins so far and packed about a cup full of blueberries every morning for breakfast.  But I'd like to make a couple more recipes and get back to pick at least once more!