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| Sweet Potato picking blueberries. |
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| Seriously. What a deal. |
June is blueberry season on the Texas Gulf Coast, and if you are anywhere near the area you must drive out to Moorehead Blueberry Farm and pick your own blueberries. We arrived early on a Sunday morning (yes, we skipped church to pick blueberries. Don't judge me.) At about 9am the heat was just beginning to creep in. We found the place, thanks to good signage, at the end of a bumpy dirt road, parked the car and headed toward the gate. We were greeted by two young men who handed us buckets and directed us to the best picking area. Upon entering the orchard I marveled at the acre upon acre of tall bushy blueberry shrubs loaded with berries. We staked out a spot and started picking. Sugar Snap gathered the berries closer to the ground, while Sweet Potato and I held our own in the middle, and hubby snagged the upermost berries. We were soon joined by a family with a small (I'd say three year old) boy, and enjoyed some casual conversation. It wasn't long, however, before Sweet Potato became indignant. Her sister was picking the berries, and popping more of them in her mouth than in her bucket. In her defense, the berries were big and juicy and sweet. I was doing my best to fill my bucket, but I, too, was giving in to temptation. We decided that we would 'fess up when it came time to pay that we had probably eaten a pound or so berries in the field and would be happy to pay for them (at $2 a pound!) Satisfied with that, we continued to pick berries. Our goal was 10 pounds, and judging by the size of the bucket, we could tell we were getting close to that amount. Let me tell you, it was soooo hard to walk away from the berries that were still on those bushes. It must be some sort of latent hunter/gatherer thing because we all felt it. There's always one more perfect berry just begging to be picked. We managed to tear ourselves away and walked back to the covered area where they have the cash registers and scales. Sure enough, we had picked 10 pounds. $20. What a bargain! Sweet Potato proceeded to explain that we figured we had eaten about a pound or so in the field and would like to pay for them. The man behind the register wouldn't hear of it. He explained that it was part of the deal - they fully expect and hope that their customers will sample the berries, and are happy about that. That eased Sweet Potato's conscience. He turned out to be Sid Moorehead, the son of Albert, the gentleman who started the Blueberry Farm. It's a rather quaint story: some time in the 1970's Mr. Moorehead attended a presentation hosted by Texas A&M Agriculture Dept. in Overton, Texas. The purpose was to introduce blueberry farming to Texas farmers. Apparently, the idea appealed to Mr. Moorehead, who planted 20 plants the first year and expanded with his success every year into what is now the 20 acre farm with 20 different varieties of blueberries. His son Sid now runs the business. We chatted briefly before shopping the little jam and pickle booth that was set up right outside the gate. We bought the kids a sno cone to cool off, also for sale right near the front gate (genius!). We continued to nibble on blueberries all the way home to Pearland.
When we got home I froze most of the berries for future use, I turned some into blueberry sorbet, dried some for granola, and turned some into blueberry cobbler. Our only regret - we should have picked 20 pounds.
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| Berry pickers! |
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