Finding the Last Late Season Blueberries: Haibun

Picking Redux: The Last of the Late Season Blueberries

It was, they said, too late in the season to find even the last of the late season blueberries. For weeks, pickers and birds had scoured the field for the small, blue bursts of anti-oxidants and health and taste. OH! The taste! Our house chef was right when she’d told me, earlier, that pancakes made with blueberries less than an hour out of the field were some of the best eatin’ Georgia has to offer.

We’d taken an early Saturday journey previously, arriving before anyone else was there except one older, wiser woman who knew what we suspected: Get there before the joyful families with hollering and running and watch-where-you’re-going! Don’t-kick-my-bucket! kids arrived, when it was just she and she and I were there. Two buckets, two gallons full, kept us in fresh blue pancakes and whipped cream deserts and, sometimes, just straight handfuls of summer goodness for a few weeks (not to mention the several quarts in the freezer for later!)

So we, as much as any fowl or human, were guilty of harvesting the bounty. And now, sadly, the farm was closing. “It’s not worth the long trip” from the distant cities, they’d posted. But what of the locals? Surely a 20-minute, top-down drive past newly-cut hayfields was worth the risk, wasn’t it?

“Come on!” they said.

So come on we did, tearing top down southward along Alabama Highway, arriving after an early Saturday dump run and workout, to discover that we, still, were the only ones there, except for the dozen or so birds flitting from bush to bush, pointing the way to where the most blueberries still were. Through the grass we trudged, our shoes quickly sopping from the dew that the sun had not yet burned away. Though the day promised to be a typical late-July Georgia scorcher, amidst the shade of the towering oaks and the shorter, dense blueberry bushes, the morning was still cool and refreshingly moist.

Hooray for Late Season Blueberries!

Were there berries? Yes. One here, two there, on a few bushes and branches, sometimes three or four in a prized cluster! The taste (dare I admit I snuck a few?) was still rich, full-bodied — can blueberries be described like a fine wine? — fresh and healthy-tasting. Enough to drop-drop-drop into the plastic pails with a soft “thunk” at first (on the bare bucket bottom), and then as the container filled, with barely a whisper as a dozen or so fell from my funneled hands.

Down to the bottom of the field we went, separating, hoping to find those bushes the birds and other pickers had missed, but to no avail.  Going around the outside of the bushes, searching the undergrowth, reaching as high as possible, and even going through the outside barrier branches into the interior, availed little. Still, the dew, the softly-shining and ripe-coated deep blue fruit clamored for attention amidst their bright pink and white unripe siblings.

Up and down, in and out, back and forth, to and fro, we wove through the field like weavers on a giant loom, each deep in our own thoughts, our solitude, our internal singing (why did I have an earworm song about The Valley, Hannah? At least it was pleasant!), our contemplations. At last, my loneliness was too much (we, after all, haven’t been married that long!), and I searched for her maroon leggings amongst the green and silver shining leaves.

Joining up, we compared buckets: Only slightly more than a third gallon each. We agreed: The pickin’ was slow. We combined our gatherings and headed back up the hill, stopping now and then to add a few more morsels that we’d missed to our harvest. At last, feet wet and just starting to sweat from the sun that was now dappling hard through the trees, we reached the honors system shack. There, we transferred our precious pickings to our bright silver bowl, inserted our folded bills as payment into the little mailbox, returned the plastic pails to their table, and rejoiced that we, still, alone, had found the late-season treasures.

The Joy of Late Season Blueberries: Haiku

My arm may ache blue/
from picking, but her dessert/
eases any pains.

#TheBlueBerryFarm #GeorgiaBlueberries #AgriTourism #Blueberries #LateSeason

Recipe: Marnie’s Blueberry / Strawberry Dream Dessert – it’s a no-bake cheesecake recipe she created that uses no processed sugars.