I’ll never forget the first time we went blueberry picking (see post here). On the drive down to Temecula, Ben talked about his dreams of retiring and having a blueberry farm. While that most likely won’t happen, he is on his way to creating his own kind of suburban orchard in our backyard. Everything is still in the very beginning stages, but there’s a lot going on (the project list is long). The list of trees just keep growing and growing, especially after watching The Fruit Hunters documentary on Netflix.
Here we are about 7 years later from that first blueberry picking trip, and we no longer have to take a drive to pick blueberries. The girls just go outside and pick a bowl full of berries for breakfast! Ben wrapped chicken wire to go around the blueberry plants to keep the birds from eating them. Last year we did a rectangular PVC pipe cage wrapped with netting, but with the strong winds we get in our area, it would just come apart. The chicken wire stays in place much better, but some berries still get stolen away by the birds. Argh!
In December, while we were in Texas, things got unusually cold in SoCal and some of our blueberry bushes froze. Thankfully, they didn’t die, but they didn’t grow back a lot of leaves. We have gathered a good amount of blueberries, but with all the girls loving them so much, they don’t really last too long around here (see some of our harvest here and here). Ben and I barely get a handful because they devour it so quickly!
SO wonderful! Enjoy!
Yummie! In sweden we have blueberries wild in the woods. The plant is much smaller but have a lot of sweet berries on it. Definitely one of my favorite!
We loooove blueberries at our house, too! We moved into a house w/ two blueberry bushes in the yard and got so excited about having our own, fresh berries to pick. No thorns, either – perfect for kids (maybe a little too perfect, as you noted with only getting to eat a few). : ) Since then we’ve added another and received one for the kids’ Christmas gift. We’re in Seattle so our berries are still green…but we were excited to see them there!
Oh yum yum template! I’m in Australia, so sadly we are in the wrong season. But I’m counting down the days…
How cool that Bens got so much growing now. I love blueberries too. They are usually reasonably expensive to buy here in Australia so I don’t get them often, but fresh from your yard – heavenly 🙂
yum!! the prettiest fruit!
xx nikki
http://www.dream-in-neon.com
I want to have this in my house!
http://colorflutterby.blogspot.com/
Blueberries, yummy:) In Poland we have blueberries in the forest and many people go for picking.
That is so awesome!
I love this custom and in particular on summer days we can go with whole family to the forest and pick up these blue fruits. It is really fun for whole family, children of course more eat than pick the fruits:).