Blues pickin’

For money, love, and tang

By Jill Strauss

It’s peak season for blueberries right now in Cumberland County. You can pick your own at: Henrickson’s Farm (Open from now until the blueberries are gone from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day except Saturdays), 234 Allen Hill Road, Oxford, (207) 539-4890.

As a girl I engaged in many uplifting recreational activities during the dog days of summer in New York — like sucking on a rainbow colored snow cone at Coney Island while waiting in line for the roller coaster ride. But I must admit I never went blueberry picking in my youth. Until recently I never realized that, to some of my friends born and raised in the state of Maine, this means I had a deprived childhood.

“All right, so I never plucked a blueberry from a bush. Did I really miss something that important?” I asked them.

“Well, of course!” they responded emphatically. One friend told me that blueberry picking taught her the value of a dollar. When she was a girl in 1964 she used to hand harvest the tiny fruit from low bushes in Sanford for 50 cents a quart and then sell them by the side of the road. “One year I picked enough to buy my school wardrobe,” she told me proudly.

Another friend told me he never gathered enough to make any money, but he did learn about love back in 1946 when he went wild blueberrying in the high bushes of Lebanon with the girl next door.

Money and love were and still are very good reasons to go blueberry picking, but my reason for deciding to go was simply that I wanted to be able to say most sincerely to my Mainiac friends, “I’ve done it. Now get off my back.”

Although Maine is the largest producer of wild blueberries in the world, it’s not that easy to find a serious blueberry farmer in Southern Maine who is willing to let you harvest your own. After a lengthy search on the internet I finally found Henrickson’s 40-acre blueberry farm in Oxford (about 40 minutes northwest of Portland).

Carol Henrickson, her husband Roy, son Erik and daughter Julie have been inviting people to their farm for the past 25 years and encouraging them to partake of the pleasures of low sweet blueberries. This year the farm is open to the public for three weeks beginning July 30, and Henrickson was expecting a crowd. “Some people from away plan their vacations around the opening of the blueberry season,” she said with pride. I could just imagine passionate pickers from all over the country descending on her fields like hungry honeybees. How would I ever compete in such an atmosphere? “Would you consider giving me a private lesson?” I asked in my most pitiful voice. Henrickson graciously agreed and a few days later, two weeks before the grand opening, I arrived at the farm.

I had never seen a blueberry rake until I visited the Henrickson’s. “We got this one from an ad in Uncle Henry’s,” Carol Henrickson said as she lifted it off of her kitchen counter and carefully handed it to me. It looked like a steel dustpan with teeth.

“Do people ever pick by hand anymore?” I asked wondering why such a weapon was needed to attack defenseless little blueberries in an open field.

“Most people prefer to use a rake,” Henrickson replied. “It goes quicker. Then you can get out of the hot sun, sit in the shade and look the berries over.”

Once we got out into the Henrickson’s open field I could appreciate the need to work quickly. It was about 80 degrees and the sun was right above us. Below us were clusters and clusters of tiny, powder blue balls. Fortunately, Erik, Carol’s 32-year-old son who has been picking blueberries since he was a toddler, joined us and promised to help us fill the 20 pound galvanized steel pail we had brought along. I have to confess that I let Erik show me how to scooch down and sweep the rake through the low bushes more times than was necessary before I admitted to getting the hang of the activity. And I probably ate more than I picked, but can you blame me? Wild blueberries are so much tangier than the large cultivated ones I grew up on. And nothing is better than letting the perfectly ripened fruit burst in your mouth while you are standing in the midst of thousands of them. At last our pail was full, but there were too many Christmas colored berries in the mix.

“You came early, don’t forget,” Carol Henrickson gently reminded me when I mentioned that the darkest berries seemed to be in the minority.

“Come back in a few weeks. Then your pail will be filled with true blue ones.”

When I got home and called my blueberry loving friends to tell them I had harvested 20 pounds of berries. (I didn’t mention that I had help.) They were amazed.

“You picked lowbush berries with a rake?” “In the sun?” “Two weeks before the first of August?”

“Yes and they’re gorgeous,” I said as I cradled the phone in one hand and sorted the little green and red berries, some grass and quite a few stems into the discard pile — the pile that was twice the size of my precious blue pile.

“Well, what are you going to do with all those berries?” they asked. “You know my grandmother used to put up quarts of jam in the summer that would last us all winter. Do you have enough Ball jars?” asked one of my concerned friends. “I have a fabulous recipe for fresh blueberry pie,” said another. “And I’ll be glad to taste anything you make,” offered a third.

“Thank you for your support,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”

As it turned out, in spite of the fact that one third of the berries were inedible and my neck ached for a week, I still had enough of the darling dark ones left to make muffins and pies and blueberry jam for all of my friends. They were very impressed and all offered to go with me next year to pick blueberries, but I said I had already made plans for the hottest days of the month next year. I was going to Coney Island.

Jill Strauss can be reached at straussj@adelphia.net.