We went blueberry picking this past weekend in Canby, OR. The name of the orchard escapes me, but they allowed small children, which apparently is a hard thing to find. I can understand why, since Little ate his weight in blueberries, but come on, not allowing little kids?
Anyway, we were directed to the Elliott bushes, since they're in peak season right now, but found that the berries were entirely too tart for anything but baking. Right next to the Elliott berries though were the Brigetta, which are probably the sweetest blueberries I've ever tasted. They didn't have an abundance of berries, but there were more than enough to fill our buckets (and snack as we picked).
Little happily helped hold the bucket, and picked quite a few for himself on the low hanging branches. Blueberries are great for picking because they're airy, don't have thorns, and grow berries high and low, so anyone can find as many as they need at eye or waist level. I don't think we realized just how many berries filled up each small plastic bucket and we spent about 2 hours picking with slow progress on filling them up. At one point, Little wandered off in the raspberries and was found staring blankly at two old ladies that were clucking about his orange dinosaur shirt. They were very nice and waited there with him until his frantic mom was able to scoop him up and relocate him amongst the blueberries again.
We ended up with three buckets filled about 1/2-3/4 full, totaling about 18 pounds of berries. The fourth bucket was for Little, so he would stop poaching from our stash. He thought it was pretty cool that he got a "big one" all to himself. We were all hungry and stopped by Burgerville on the way home for their seasonal blackberry smoothies and a snack.
We got back home, plopped the berries on the counter and wondered how the heck we were going to fit them all in the refrigerator. We pulled out all of the berry containers that we'd be saving for recycling and started stacking pints and pints of berries on the shelves. Last night, M made a blueberry kuchen, which was fantastic, and tonight we're going to take a stab at low-sugar blueberry jam (since the berries are so sweet on their own). The rest will be frozen for use in the winter when we're aching for a blueberry pie or crumble.
I love that summer is finally in full swing and we're getting to enjoy the bounty.
Anyway, we were directed to the Elliott bushes, since they're in peak season right now, but found that the berries were entirely too tart for anything but baking. Right next to the Elliott berries though were the Brigetta, which are probably the sweetest blueberries I've ever tasted. They didn't have an abundance of berries, but there were more than enough to fill our buckets (and snack as we picked). 
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