Blueberries for Ernie

I think the story of the blueberry form is best told through pictures. So here goes....

Amos H., youngest son of my college friend Bill H. and his wife Amy.

Blueberry field in Maine here on Red House Farm. Blueberries grow so well in Maine because the soil is so rocky and therefore have no competition from other plants. Yes, basically blueberry bushes are the low plant on natural selection totem pole and are winners here.

Red House is an organic blueberry farm, therefore the berries are considered "low bush." The berries grow best when the plants are new buds, that's why there number of berries are so great. To get new buds to sprout, the fields are burned after a harvest and therefore are on a two-year cycle. The berries are so numerous because of the hand weeding that the farm does in the winter and spring as the bushes are starting out.

Step 1: Rake

Step 2: Fill box

Step 3: To the Winnowing Shed

The winnowing machine at rest

Step 4: Dribbling the blueberries into the winnower. The dribbler is the point guard of the winnowing operation. Depending on the quality of the berries (i.e. are they too mushy and squished or are there too many stems) the dribbler has to maintain the right pace for the pickers below.

Once the berries go "down the chute", a fan blows out all the leaves and branches. The downward moving belt guides the heavier and nicer berries down to the second belt while whisking the lighter/smaller berries out the back. 30-40% of picked berries are rejected at this stage.

Step 5: Pick through. Sitting for hours on end (sometimes) picking berries is tough. You're looking for squished, small and discolored berries. Once the belt is turned off and you look at the belt, it appears to move backwards. Totally a mind blower.

Step 6: Boxing and Delivering! 230 Pounds of blueberries ready for delivery to a local coop. The majority of Red House blueberries are delivered to a local coop and CSA. However, about 1/3 of blueberries are sold via pre-order for pick up by local residents. Red House boxed 300 or so pounds of blueberries a day.

However, these are premium blueberries for personal consumption. A majority of berries are harvested for a local company which doesn't care about the visual quality of the berries as they will get these other not-so-perfect berries into yogurts and pancake mixes. Red House takes some 500+ pounds of these type to an outfit called "Coastal Blueberries". At the end of the season, Coastal will determine a price per pound and credit the farm for the amount they delivered.

For those of you wondering, Amy and Bill both teach and make the bulk of their income that way. Running the blueberry farm in the summer is a work of love and also earn enough income to send their three kids to school.

Here the berries are marketed at the local coop!

Family photo at the coop from a few years ago.

The red house of Red House farms.

I spent the week sleeping on the enclosed porch seen here.

The kitchen! It's amazing how well one can eat while on a farm! The food tastes so much better. It's true!

Less that 5% of food I ate the week I was here was processed.

A tomato and potato blight has moved through New England. Here is Bill burning the tops of potatoes.

The boys had just received the game of Risk for one of their birthdays. I was roped into playing.

They were so obsessed with it that for most of the week we would play while winnowing by rotating out the player who was not involved in a battle. Alas, I have to admit that I introduced trash-talking to the boys of Red House. When I starting saying "Man-Up" and "Bring-It-ON", they looked at me funny. But by the end of the week, they had clearly learned the essentials of goading each other and followed my lead in taking great joy in eliminating a player off the board. Their parents asked me to hide the game by the end of the week. Boys, if your reading, the Risk game is under your parents bed!

Afternoon swims at a pond around the corner occurred almost daily!

The boys with Noah of Lubec, ME. Noah is from Down East and worked for Red House for the week. Turns out he knows former students of mine from Lawrenceville from Lubec AND went to college with two HRS students I know. Perhaps my world is too small.