Blueberry Farm

For a time in my life, I lived on a blueberry farm. I had gotten married in the city and had a job there but sometime in the first year, we bought this small blueberry farm up in the Appalachian highlands. It came complete with about a thousand bushes as tall as my head, an outhouse, and a small cabin built down on a waterfall with a pond.

It had been constructed by an ex merchant marine sailor turned landlubber and had all sorts of odd maritime touches – porthole windows, sextant light fixtures, and a separate bathhouse with a clawfoot bathtub built out sort of hanging over the waterfall. A little like a very poor man’s Fallingwater by Frank Loyd Wright. You could lie in the tub and be serenaded by the water cascading over the rocks.

No indoor flush toilet. And everything was connected by a series of sketchy walkways back and forth over the creek, and then up the hill to the….did I mention it had an outhouse?

One of the first weeks of ownership, I ventured out to the hardware store in town for some shelving lumber and drywall screws. Standing at the counter I struck up a conversation with an old-timer, a local chewing tobacco and periodically stepping out on the porch to spit out the juice.

“Oh yeah, I know that place,” he said when I told him where I lived. “Look like Popeye the Sailor built it!”

Yessir. That’s my place. And believe me, I’ll be making plenty of trips up here to the hardware store for building supplies!

So anyway, after about a year of driving up to the farm from the city part-time, trying to keep the berries maintained, the grass mowed, all the farm sort of stuff that really needs to be done on a daily basis, we decided to bite the bullet, leave the city, and move to the farm full time. Late summer berry season was about to hit its stride, and it was looking like a bumper crop.

My wife got a job managing the office at one of the local summer kids camps the area was known for. I commuted down to my job on the weekends, writing sports for the city paper. Being a cub reporter, I mostly had to be at high school football, baseball, and basketball games. Sometimes wrestling. And usually, they were on the weekends.

Ripe blueberries generally start coming in around July 4th, and that first year there were a lot of them. I mean A LOT OF THEM. And it was the middle of summer so it was hot. The best time to pick was early morning or late afternoon. Evenings I would park my truck out in the berries with a baseball game on the radio and pick until dark. And sometimes after dark by the headlights of the truck. I picked, my wife picked, and we hired some local kids to pick. We had a lot of blueberries. And they kept coming. We’d pick them one day, and overnight there’d be more.

I cut some 4×8 sheets of plywood and made shelves for the back of my pick up and once a week we’d take a load down to Harry’s Farmers Market in the city. I’d back that little Nissan truck up to the loading dock, between the big semi’s and tractor-trailers, and Harry’s would buy our whole load. Wholesale, we were still making about $2000 per trip. Good money.

Meanwhile, all through July and August, the berries kept coming, finally slowing down in early September. The weather cooled off, the blueberry leaves turned green to crimson, and then it was Fall. Before you knew it winter was setting in.

Did I mention we heated the cabin with a wood stove? Which needed to be stoked around 3 AM every night? And the toilet was up an unlit outdoor path to the outhouse?

I love Christmas and that first one was a beauty. The whole property was covered in varieties of evergreens and holly and we made most of our decorations from just what grew in the yard. Pine cones, holly berries, grapevines. Except for white twinkly lights, which we strung everywhere. And then even got snow Christmas Eve. The whole place was truly a winter wonderland.

And New Year’s Eve, instead of the usual going out in the city, we opened champagne, built a fire, and welcomed the new year sharing the evening together. Just the two of us, my wife and I. Under a night sky so full of stars you could almost reach up and grab a handful.

We only lived there full-time for a year. Moved on, started businesses, had children. As they got older we’d visit the farm, and the kids would play in the creek, go camping, have sleepovers. We turned the berry operation into a U pick. Just come and pick your own, $9 a gallon. Leave payment in the box. Honor system.

And then this year we sold it. After more than thirty years.

Seems nobody much visited anymore. Children had gone their separate ways, off to college and careers. And so had we. No need to hold on to it. Too much upkeep.

On my last trip there I walked around over the property, down to the cabin and the waterfall. A good Spring rain had the water flowing clear, loud, and fast. A little early to say, but it looked like there would be a healthy crop of blueberries come late summer. Around July 4th, same as always. The bushes needed pruning but that would have to wait till Fall. In one large thick bush, some robins had built a nest. Five small pale blue speckled eggs snuggled there, waiting for the noonday sun.

A lot of fond memories on that land – the falling water, unpolluted star-packed night skies, freshly picked blueberries on morning cereal. Sharing it all with close friends and family. A simpler time where I learned a lot. About the land, about responsibility, about myself.

Maybe Freud said it best.

“All a person needs to be happy is to work and to love.”

True enough…