A Berry Exciting Day

 

Real sky-blue, and heavy, and ready to drum

In the cavernous pail of the first one to come. Robert Frost

"Ever pick blueberries?"

"Nope."

"Want to go check it out?"

"Yep."

Driving a few miles out of Raymond, Washington into the nearby forest, we follow a winding road until we see a small sign for Smith Creek Blueberries propped in front of a tree-lined entryway. It's 7 a.m. and we're the first ones to arrive. As we hop out of the truck, a young woman greets us and hands us plastic pails with a loop-like handles long enough for hanging around our necks. Over the past few days, we've spent hours picking blackberries along the Willapa River trail, one-handing the berries into small plastic ware bowls so the advanced pail-technology garners approving nods from all of us.

Kristy wears the bucket well

"Oh, this is great. Now we can pick with both hands," we say.

Guiding us over to the weigh-in area, our host sets us up with cardboard flats and explains how the picking process works. "The blueberry bushes are right behind you and they're packed with berries right now so you should have an easy time of it. Fill up your pail, bring it back here, and dump it into your flat. When you've finished picking, we'll weigh you out so you can pay." She scoops a flaxen-headed little girl, toddling around, on to her hip and then stops briefly to rub the head of an aging black dog. As she walks away she says, "Just ignore the chickens wandering around. They won't bother you. And feel free to take a look around the farm."

Annette picking blueberries

Behind us, rows of tall bushes densely packed with blueberries await us. Unlike the blackberry bushes we've been wrangling the past few days, these blueberry bushes have no way to defend themselves. No thorny pricks greet our greedy fingers as we reach for the blue fruit. Wearing our pails around our necks, we head deeper into the patch. A russet-colored rooster streaks by followed by three gorgeous hens in an array of colors traveling at a more leisurely pace. The chickens scan the rows, occasionally snatching up a blueberry from the ground. The hungry chicken patrol relieves us of any guilt we might suffer due to careless picking resulting in the occasional dropped blueberry. As we move around the patch sampling different bushes, picking a variety of fat, and not so fat, succulent blueberries, we lose ourselves in the simple pleasure of harvesting. Because the neck-loop-technology is pure genius, even novices like us fill our pails in no time.

Happy chickens

Although the farm isn't large, it packs in a lot of diversity. Meandering around the outer edges of the blueberry patch, we discover a fenced pen with two healthy looking hogs snuffling the ground. Behind the hog pen we see a few turkeys high stepping across a small field and then disappearing into the greenery. Meanwhile, the chickens stream past us again. We follow them to find an empty chicken coop, elaborate in a rustic way with ramps and roosts, where this chicken clan must congregate in their evening and nighttime hours. Between the chicken coop and the blueberry patch, a tall, fenced enclosure surrounds a large garden packed with lettuces, radishes, beets, and all sorts of other vegetables. Scattered around the farm's outer boundaries, apple trees lift branches heavy with fruit. Every square foot of Smith Creek Organic Farm pulses with life, testifying to hard work, ably done.

Blue fruit...yummy

Back at the weigh-in station, the yellow-haired toddler now clambers around the feet of a congenial, bearded young man, who balances our flat of blueberries on the scale. Between the two of us, Kristy and I weigh in at six pounds. Lynn follows with two pounds of her own blue beauties. At the bargain self-pick price of $2 a pound that amounts to $16 for all three of us to enjoy a morning in the country, plus a take-home stash of blueberries to eat for days. Deeming our first blueberry picking experience an extreme success, we head back to South Bend, popping the fruits of our labor, one by one, into our mouths.

proud of our pickings

 

what a great place to spend a morning