Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

FAYETTE

July 22, 2010

A batch of blues ready for picking

By Betty Adams badams@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

FAYETTE -- Clusters of grape-sized blueberries bow branches on the 1,500 highbush plants at Steep HIll Farm.

The ripened fruit hangs at an easy picking level. No bending required, no rakes needed.

Bob Panit and Shirley Jackson picked two pies' worth of the Patriot and Northland varieties on a visit this week.

"My wife's gone to the truck to get a bucket, so we can eat some instead of just cooking them all," Panit said.

The New Hampshire couple summer at a camp in Mount Vernon, and visit the blueberry farm each year.

Two other regulars -- Jutta and Willi Hartung, of Augusta -- carted out six quarts.

"They're going into the freezer, and they'll come out off and on during the winter," Jutta Hartung said.

"Every year we come. It's the best place to pick blueberries," Willi Hartung said. "I'm on the fourth quart and haven't moved from this bush yet."

Both couples opted to pick early Tuesday, when dewdrops pooled like rain on the shiny, elliptic green leaves. Turkeys watched from atop the hill, the young poults hidden by the brush.

Blueberry season -- probably about six weeks -- picks up as strawberry season wanes.

It's high season for the 6-foot to 7-foot high blueberry bushes -- a little earlier than normal, according to George Joseph, who owns Steep Hill Farm with his wife, Brenda.

He is a retired school superintendent; she retired as a special education director.

"It's a hobby gone crazy," George Joseph said. He planted the bushes in 1984, ran the farm for a while, then went on hiatus to work as a school superintendent in Vinalhaven and Carrabassett Valley.

"A lot of things in Maine are a couple weeks ahead of where we normally are, given the summer we've had," said Ned Porter, deputy commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture.

David T. Handley, vegetable and small fruit specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, based at Highmoor Farm in Monmouth, said that among the crops that he deals with, one of the most expanding crops is pick-your-own highbush blueberries.

Handley said the latest census numbers show that Maine has more than 100 acres of pick-your-own blueberries, and he thinks the actual number may be closer to 200 acres.

The Fayette farm, which reopened about three years ago, offers pick-your-own blueberries between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. daily. The plants are neatly mulched and a black hose provides irrigation to keep the thirsty plants well watered.

George Joseph directs visitors to good picking sites, which appear to be just about everywhere on the neatly kept hillside.

He likes to keep the picking spread out over the 2 1/2 acres of bushes. He tells visitors the plump berries of the Patriot and Northland varieites marry sweet and tart in a distinct wild flavor. The farm also offers Bluecrop and Bluerays.

He prunes the bushes each year, taking out the oldest canes and leaving in the green-stemmed new growth. Balloons painted with several eyes, mylar ribbon streamers and a propane-powered cannon help keep hungry birds at bay.

The cannon's off when people are picking.

"The blueberries are early this year, and with this heat, are in danger or coming and going before people get out to pick them," Brenda Joseph said.

Her job is supplying containers and trays and collecting the money for the fruit. A cedar plank-lined barn also has a gift shop with the farm's blueberry logo and containers of maple syrup.

Here's a website offering locations for picking your own produce in Maine: www.pickyourown.org/ME.htm

Information about Steep Hill Farm is available at www.maineblueberryfarm.com/

Betty Adams -- 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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