Every year around the first of June, we put bird netting around the blueberry bushes. We can always tell when there are crops near maturity in the food forest just by watching the way birds are flying around our property. Birds love blueberries. We learned that we should have bird netting up protecting our harvest years ago when we first started to have ripe blueberries. Birds are sneaky. They seem to always know when blueberries are sweet and ready for harvest, then they beat us to the harvest. We learned long ago that no bird netting around the blueberry bushes = no blueberries for the humans.
This year we are taking a risk. We are too busy and lazy to put up the bird netting. Currently, we are constructing a guest cottage just outside of our fenced-in food forest. There have been lots of vehicles and workers in and out of our property just on the other side of the blueberry bushes. Birds have been flying all around the food forest and resting on the fences. I can tell they are eager to dive in and steal some of the delicious blue jewels. However, I think all the construction noises and people are scaring them this year. Not wanting to push our luck. We decided to harvest a few days early this year.
Since we are harvesting a few days early this year and blueberries do not get more ripe after they are harvested, so our blueberries are not as candy sweet as last year. They are sweet but with a bit of tartness. They still taste better than the store bought ones, I have to say. We drink several fruit smoothies daily, so we will be putting our daily harvest into them to enjoy.
My husband and I love to play around with our homegrown food from the food forest. Can't harvest blueberries without having a little fun at the same time. Oh No! My husband was eating so many blueberries while he was harvesting, it rotted his front teeth out. I should have warned him that this would happen when he decided to eat his harvest instead of sharing them with me.
We just picked all the blueberries that are plump and have turned blue yesterday evening. When I walked through the food forest this afternoon, I noticed equal amount of blueberries were hanging on the bushes waiting for us to pick. I guess we will have to pick another container this evening to beat the birds to the harvest.
