With Summer having arrived, it was the perfect time to make a trip to a fruit farm and pick some fruits… and in this case, we decided on blueberries. Despite the heat, we had a lot more fun in the bushes picking blueberries than we thought we would.
Born out of the COVID19 Pandemic, this guide is here to serve as information of some places to consider going if you’ve binged all your Netflix, played all your games, baked all that sourdough bread and maybe just want to get out (or find things to do to stay in). As a family man myself and also a photographer who likes to explore, I found it difficult to find things to do to keep myself and my little one busy at home (there’s only so many times you can listen to "Baby Shark") so I thought that as I discover some of these experiences and places and shared them through my photography, it would help you generate some ideas to get out of the house and (following the proper social distancing and health protocols) get some fresh air.
You, of course, are responsible for taking the proper precautions and doing your part in social distancing and self-isolating if you aren’t feeling well. Always follow the BC Health Guidelines and do your part in keeping yourself and others safe. You can find the info here.
Blueberry picking is very much a hands-on experience and takes you out of the comfort of staring at a computer screen checking on memes (not that I do that…often…). I felt myself shedding away all of the thoughts of technology and concrete and animated gifs and just found myself focusing on grabbing all the blueberries I could reach while navigating my hands and face through branches and leaves to get the most ripe ones.
The literal fruits of our labour…
Our day started early at around 10am and it was hot that day. At the time, we could only detect maybe one other family so we were not concerned about being in a large crowd although I can imagine this place would get busy on long weekends. Once we paid our fees, one of the staff took us out on an all-terrain golf cart to our assigned blueberry-picking lane and dropped us off. This was our little one’s first blueberry-picking outing and she really enjoyed the experience of learning how to pick a blueberry from a branch and putting it in a bucket (she’s just under 2 years old so this was all new and exciting). As with most kids though, after a while she got bored with the blueberries and started playing with the grass and the branches and the leaves and occasionally snuck a blueberry into her mouth.
Before they were blueberries, they were flowers? …. SCIENCE!
Pick…
… and inspect.
We came home with a sizeable box of blueberries and have since frozen them for future use (there was no way we were going to be able to eat a whole carton of blueberries between the 3 of us in a matter of days without due consequence). Having been stuck indoors for the past few months, it was nice to be able to enjoy the outdoors responsibly and socially distanced from others while grabbing a sweet delicacy that we could enjoy later.
We filled up one of these boxes with about an hour of picking.