Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to appreciate the beauty of picking fresh fruits!

Joyous Blueberry Season

Am I the only one who is experiencing the year just flying by and going TOO DAMN FAST?!? What the hell.. It's already blueberry season and I barely blinked, after the spring had started! Damn, time is just flying by way too quickly if you ask me LOL

Enough complaining though.. blueberries! My sons definite favorite snack, and especially the nice and big ones that are the early season blueberries. He doesn't really care for the ultra sweet ones and I don't blame him. Those to me just taste wrong.. blueberries need to have a tiny bit of tart in them at a minimum! Thankfully these blueberries here are my favorite variety, the early season first fruiting ones! Those ones are the ones that are a lot more tart than the ones that start to ripen in a couple weeks. We made an adventure out of it and took care of some blueberry business!

With all of the rain that we've been getting this year, the berries weren't the most ripe that they could have been, plus with the cooler spring season we had it didn't do a whole lot of benefits for the berries. We still got a good amount of them on the trees though which is good!

With the lack of sunlight shining down without the hindrance of clouds blocking those vital rays, the berries weren't ripening up as quickly as they should have been. The good thing about the rain though with the berries is that it kept the honeybees and other bee species away! It's always tough when you are picking a sweet crop like this and there are bees all over them waiting to sting you if you happen to accidentally grab them. No bueno!

The trees were spread all over the field and one thing that was interesting that we didn't notice as much in previous years, is that the trees are interspersed with different varieties every so many trees. I know they do that on purpose to spread the plants out and I think that likely helps the trees cross pollinate themselves better in the spring. Not having them all next to each other is probably a good advantage that they enjoy. The trees were 2-3 of one variety, the early variety, and then it would be another 4-6 of other varieties. You could tell there were multiple different ones because not only were the berries not ripening at the same time but they were also different sizes and appearances. That was pretty cool to visually see, as I mentioned we didn't really notice it before!

One of the other farms we go to a lot told us that there are about 40 different varieties of blueberry trees and berries! I was blown away by that! haha. I figured there were like 7 or 8 of them but 40 is insane! I know that the different varieties are likely for different purposes such as the easiest one to understand, ripening at different times across the summer picking season. This certainly helps extend the season for the farmers and people that enjoy going out into the fields to pick their own.

We've been picking our own fruits for as long as I can remember! It was mostly apples as a kid but since I've gotten older and started our own family with my wife and son, we've gone berry picking for each different item in season. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches and apples are our common and favorites! I know we are wicked lucky to live in an area where there are those different varieties of possibility to harvest!

The other cool thing about the whole experience is that if you take a step back and appreciate the nature around you, you realize how beautiful it all is! The plants, lush green everywhere and millions of berries just waiting there for the people and animals to come on by and harvest what they can and need. It's such an incredible cycle and it's one of the important things that I know we need more people to understand and appreciate. If we could incorporate these things in major cities throughout the country and world, let people reconnect back to nature and see how important these things are, we could likely make so many improvements across the board.

There have been studies where just simply adding trees along streets in urban areas reduces the crime because it gives people a calmer attitude, cools down the temperatures a bit with the reduction in sunlight hitting the dark and absorbent pavement and it cleans the air a bit as well, reducing challenges associated with air quality.

We are going to go back to the field in a couple days and harvest a bunch more blueberries so that we can stock up our freezer for the coming winter season! The little man loves to eat them frozen and we happily oblige with that healthy snack before bed.

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI.}

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