Good Blue Fun

Blueberries have been getting lots of attention these days as being a superfood.  Apparently they are just bursting with lots of good things for our bodies.  These are one of my personal favorites.  I love the way the little round fruits pop between your teeth releasing all that juice onto your taste buds.  Now that’s good stuff.

Last week Tony & I went to the Berry Bush Blue Berry Farm in Ben Wheeler.  Not only are blueberries good to eat, but they are a lot of fun to pick.  Blueberry bushes mature into very tall shrubs which means that the shrub itself casts some pretty good shade making the job not so hard in the hot summer.  In this area blueberries ripen during June and July.  

At the Berry Bush, the berries are $18.00 per gallon if you buy then already picked or $12.00 per gallon you pick.  I like picking the fruit and it is a great experience for kids to see where the food they eat comes from.  When you walk into the shed by the parking lot, there are stacks of gallon size baskets so it is easy to know how much you have picked.  Tony & I each got a basket.  Of course, being who I am I started competing with him to see who could pick the most the fastest.  Tony was unaware of the contest (it’s easier to win that way) and walked over and dumped his basket into mine.  Oh well.   A few summers back we stopped at a u pick pea patch and I thoroughly thumped him and 2 kids.  Three against one and they still lost.  I attribute this pea picking skill to the summer I picked peas for my Uncle Pat who farmed around the corner from our house.  I was 12 and to this day, I still consider that the hardest work I ever did, but I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything.  Blueberry picking is much easier than pea picking.

Once you have picked what you want and eaten a few (or more), you take your berries back to the shed and the sweet little lady puts them in a paper sack and you pay her the money.  Talk about easy and fun.  By the way, should you feel guilty about eating some berries, the sweet lady told us to be sure to taste the berries from the bush we were picking from to make certain they were good and sweet.  So, its ok to eat along the way making the experience all the more sweet.

Not only does Ben Wheeler have a great blueberry farm, they have a great hamburger joing.  It is located in the Exxon.  Don’t let that fool you, Sam’s makes one of the best burgers I have eaten, cooked when you order it and made from a hand patted patty.  The veggies are fresh and crisp.  You can eat you burger at the soda fountain while sitting on old fashioned bar stools- another great bit of fun for the kids.  The burger is big enough to share and is priced less than the fast food burgers that aren’t good for you. 

So check out The Berry Bush- http://www.berrybushusa.com/,  and Sam’s Exxon in Ben Wheeler- you will be glad you did.  These pictures are from their website.