I found my thrill

On Blueberry Hill.  New Orleans' own Louis Armstrong (and also Fats Domino) sang that famous song purportedly about a 'make-out' spot in Taos, New Mexico where the singer met his love.  While our blueberries aren't planted on a hill, we don't live in New Mexico, and there's not a lot of making out that goes on around our blueberry bushes, we are thrilled when we eat them!  (Smile)

They are ripening right now.  They don't all get ripe at the same time and we generally will pick around a pint every day for several weeks.  We try to pick them everyday as the birds have an affinity for them as well!


Time to pick the ripe ones!

We have 9 blueberry bushes bordering the pasture fortunately out of reach of our goats who will eat anything and everything that gets too close to the fence.  In the picture below you can see 3 of them along with an unflattering shot of Maggie, our Jersey heifer in the background.

3 of our 9 blueberry bushes

Blueberries bloom in the early Spring with a multitude of blooms that honeybees love and then they fill up with berries at varying stages of development.

Our bushes, I think they are the rabbit eye variety, fill up with berries and then the plant droops over with the weight.  You have to be careful when mowing around them.


Drooping limbs full of berries

Here are some that are a few weeks from maturity, still light green colored.

Here are some that are blushing.  They must have seen someone 'making out' nearby...


Beautiful, blushing blueberries

Then thy get reddish-colored.  If you're impatient and eat one of these, they're sort of bitter.



Red Blueberries

And finally, some in the cluster start to ripen.
 

Ripe blueberry

They're easy to pick, but it is a time-consuming process, going round and round the bush finding all the ripe ones hiding amongst the foliage.

Will this go in the bucket or straight into my mouth?  Hmmm...

We'll bring them inside, pick the little stems off of them if the stem stayed on the berry, and wash them up real good.  We have lots of little bugs crawling around that we don't want to eat.



Washed up blueberries

And finally we'll put them in a quart sized Ziploc bag and pop them in the freezer.  They freeze solid, but individually so that you can pour out exactly what you need for blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes or waffles, blueberry kefir smoothies, etc. 

Freezing the berries for later use

We will be THRILLED to eat them.  I can't wait.  Not only are they delicious, but they are loaded with a multitude of micronutrients that make you healthy, happy, wealthy and wise.  Okay, I exaggerated a bit about the wealthy and wise part.