Sunday, August 3, 2008

Stocking the Freezer

Every year we go blueberry picking at a place alongside the North Umpqua River. The owner attends our church, and she has the best berries around.
We arrived at about 7:30 a.m. because it gets pretty hot around 10:00. We left at about 11:15, and exceeded our previous blueberry excesses by quite a bit. I thought we picked a lot last year at 130 pounds. Wrong. 217 pounds is a lot. A whole lot.
It's addictive, see? You walk by these bushes just LOADED with plump, ripe, delicious berries, and you can't just walk by.I mean, look at that!
Throw in a tad, just a tad bit of competitiveness between dad and teenage sons, and you wind up with...

...as much as the minivan will hold. I mean, seriously, what the heck are we going to DO with all these?
Well, I'll tell you what I did until about 9:30 that night. I cleaned berries! And bagged and froze. I believe I owe Todd a real blueberry pie (thanks a lot, Karyn!), but I just can't face that quite yet.

Seriously, though, blueberry picking day is also blueberry cleaning day, and I love it because I get to watch LOTR movies! All. day. I got through the extended versions of Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers and more than halfway through Return of the King before I finished.

Of course, I had helpers. But they snuck out at 3:00 to go see some Mummy movie.

Aren't blueberries beautiful?

I see cobblers, pies and plenty milkshakes in our future.

And after all, we did run out this year.

4 comments:

Laura said...

YIKES. That's is more blueberries than I have ever seen before. Can you imagine how long it would have taken to pick that many Alaskan wild blueberries! Congrats on the year's bounty! And the antioxidants!

Katie said...

oh. my. gosh. that's so many blueberries. but really, what WILL you do with all of them? make jam? pies? please post later and update on what you ended up doing!

Meggan said...

drew gets here in a bit with a fedex box!!! I can't wait!!!
AGGAHGHAGHHGAHH!!!

Anonymous said...

Do you have a freezer just for berries????
They are gorgeous and for what I pay in the store you've got about $1000 dollars worth of blueberries there~
love you, ml