Monday, July 10, 2006

Blueberries Blueberries


Japanese beetles--those awful insects that love fruit like blueberries and can be found all over some of the branches and berries of blueberry bushes! (And even on Macintosh apple trees; I know that firsthand.)

I had an opportunity to encounter some of these creatures, because last night after church my friend Marney Rausch invited me (i.e. talked me into) going blueberry picking with her this morning, bright and early at 7 AM! Today was opening day at the Prelock Blueberry Farm. I'd only been out there picking once before a year or two ago--and never on the first day of the season.

Okay, Marney, yes, if you're reading this, I was very glad I went. The berry picking was excellent; there were LOTS of people there (and lots of helpful workers that I knew!); and the weather was perfect--it hadn't warmed up too much yet. There weren't TOO many Japanese beetles (they are pretty lethargic that early in the morning anyway). We (Marney, Amy Shaw, and I) cleaned up quite a few blueberry bushes and decided to call it quits around 8:30. I ended up with 8 pounds (24 cups) of blueberries!

So I came home, and instead of going back to sleep as I had planned, I ended up making 2 dozen blueberry muffins, a blueberry coffeecake, and a blueberry pie. And then I froze the other 16 cups!

4 comments:

kiwi said...

mmmm...blueberries are amazing! my mom and i are going blueberry picking tomorrow morning! i just finished making blueberry coffeecake from our last frozen blueberries from last summer! i'm glad you had a fun time despite the japanese beetles! ( :

La Profesora said...

i miss blueberry picking in indiana! especially at prelocks! i need to buy some blueberries. oh well, i am going to savannah next week for our anniversary and we'll buy fresh peaches as they are in season :)

Anonymous said...

I'm jealous. Picking 8 pounds of blueberries in 1 1/2 hours? Sounds like a blast. And again, I'm jealous (and slightly offended) that you baked all that blueberry goodness and didn't invite me over to have some. Maybe you could exercise those blueberry baking skills once more... say, in Upper Michigan in a few weeks?

Anonymous said...

Hey, we can have a family outing and all go blueberry picking! Can life get any better?I submit that it cannot!
Speaking of baking, I've baked banana bread, some shortcake and 3 different kinds of cookies today to give to g'ma and g'pa and to the other helfinstines and also to bring some to the CBM conference and all that kind of stuff.
Take luck!