Blueberries

Monday evening the four of us went blueberry picking. We went to this place called Z Blueberry Farm. This is the same place we went last year. They are organically grown, if you pick them they are $2.00 a pound. But they do this thing called "going halves" where they get half of what you pick and then you get the other half for free! I love free but when you spend all that time picking 8 1/2 # that really cuts into the amount you bring home, 4 1/2#.

Andrew did a pretty good job picking. He picked 1# himself. Carson fell asleep in the car on the way to the farm. He slept in the car for about 30-45 minutes and then joined us picking berries. I think his little nap was a good thing. Blueberry picking for hours is not much fun for a 2 year old.

One bad thing about this particular farm is that there is poison ivy everywhere. Last year we didn't realize this and I got poison ivy. I told a friend that we picked blueberries several weeks later and she asked if we got poison ivy. At the time I hadn't made the connection between the two. So this time we wore jeans and long sleeve shirts and I had Chad stop at the office to get me a pair of gloves!! Thankfully it was a cool evening. Hopefully we won't get it this year. I told Chad the reason they do this "going halves" is because they don't want to go out there and pick and risk getting poison ivy!! :)

Here are the all the blueberries we picked (minus the ones we munched on) being prepped for a pie and the rest for freezing.

I made my first blueberry pie. And I must admit that I was pretty proud of the way it turned out! :) I got the recipe from our friend Sarah's blog. She also just posted a recipe for Blueberry Lemon Squares that I might have to try. Andrew won't eat plain blueberries but he thought this pie was pretty yummy with some ice cream! The recipe calls for 3 pints of blueberries, which really made a big dent into the blueberries we picked! I guess we will have to go pick again, maybe we will just pay for everything we pick this time.