I love the color blue. Not light blue or teal but a truly deep, dark cobalt blue. A blueberry blue. Recently I visited my parents in Schroeder at the height of blueberry season. I have never seen anything like it. Beautiful blue blueberries were just hanging off the bushes.
We picked 32 quarts in less than two hours. We ran out of berry buckets and had to wrap a couple of gallons in my dad’s flannel shirt. I could have kept picking for another hour or so…. the weather was perfect, and the berries were huge and flavorful.
Don’t ask where we picked. I was just short of being blindfolded and sworn to secrecy. On the North Shore, the bestkept secrets are fishing holes and blueberry patches!
Most people who pick berries know that the gathering is the least of the work. You have to take all of the buckets home and clean them, removing all the leaves, the hard green berries and any little insects that got caught in the tumble of the handfuls pulled from the bush.
My dad is an inventor at heart. He is always trying to make a process easier and more efficient. His “Blueberry Cleaner” is amazing. It is a 3-foot-long screen trough with a fan underneath. At the bottom, there is a 6-inch area with larger screen holes, and then there is room for a long pan at the bottom.
The person at the top gently pours the berries down the screen. The fan blows out all the leaves. The bottom screen catches the smaller hard green berries so that by the time the rest of the berries get to the pan at the bottom they only need a small amount of cleaning.
Four of us cleaned all 32 quarts in about the same amount of time it took to pick them. It’s fun too because you can visit all the while. My mom then washes them and measures them into freezer bags.
I have many favorite blueberry recipes, but nothing beats my mom’s blueberry sourdough pancakes with melted butter and fresh maple syrup and a side of crisp bacon.
Every bite is better than the last!
Sweet and salty and the best combination of nature and the farm. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. I give you three of my other favorite recipes here. If you are ever given the chance, go blueberry picking with a friend.
Trust me, it’s worth the blindfold and secret just to see the beautiful blue of the blueberry patch!
Advice from a Blueberry
· Be well-rounded.
· Soak up the sun.
· Find beauty in small
things.
· Live a fruitful life.
· Be a good pick.
· It’s OK to be a little blue.
· Make sweet memories!
Taste of Home columnist Sandy (Anderson) Holthaus lives on a farm in South Haven, MN with her husband, Michael, and their children Zoe, Jack and Ben. Her heart remains on the North Shore where she grew up with her parents, Art and LaVonne Anderson of Schroeder. She enjoys writing about her childhood and mixes memories with delicious helpings of home-style recipes.
Leave a Reply