Month: July 2013

I’ll willingly skip a day at the beach or a sail around the lake…for me it’s worth the hour long drive and the simmering heat to be out there in the fields – picking buckets of delectable, sweet and tart, sun-warmed, OMG I just can’t eat enough of these super-fruits: organic blueberries.

Truly, every sense is heightened during this most pleasurable of summertime activities. The fact that most people buy blueberries icy cold at the supermarket, and then eat them by the handful from a punnet* is wrong, all wrong. Blueberries are best eaten one at a time, sun-kissed off the bush. Dusky and bright, each one explodes in your mouth with a warm, juicy POP! 

At the organic blueberry farm where I regularly pick each July – Emery’s Certified Organic Blueberry Farm in New Egypt, New Jersey** – there are 20 acres of blueberry bushes spread out in all directions. Amidst the rows of high bushes you are surrounded by the scent of summer, the faint buzz of baby bees, and the laughter of children a few rows over. If you get your timing just right – early morning; mid-week – you can sometimes get the blueberry field almost entirely to yourself. One year it was only me and another lone picker just a few rows over. After a while I realized he was quietly reciting bible verses to himself. “Peculiar,” was my initial thought. But then I realized, what could be more apropos? This field is just heavenly.