We got there as they opened at 8. Before you can start collecting blueberries, you need to gather along the fence so that you can . . .
. . . get a ride out to the bushes.
Here's a bunch of pickers in the highbush country.
Here's another.
Once we checked out . . .
. . . we found out we had picked 22 pounds!
I picked something like 0.2 pounds more than Sandy, which surprised me because I thought she had more than I did. Or maybe she switched pails when I wasn't looking to make me feel good.
Just a note about the blueberries. Some of the bushes had berries with white spots on them. I found out from one of the owners at Tammen Treeberry Farm that the white stuff is an insecticide called Imidan. It washes off easily. What you're supposed to do to get blueberries ready for freezing is to very gently wash them to get the insecticide off, dry them on a paper towel, spread them out on a cookie sheet, put them in the freezer, and when they're frozen, put them in containers or bags to freeze thoroughly.
Oh, yeah, we're gonna do that with 22 pounds of blueberries! I put them in quart freezer bags, then into the freezer. We'll wash 'em as we use 'em.
We went to lunch with our friend Ruth in Momence, then home.
As we got out of our van, Sandy noticed that her Chevy Tracker had a flat tire!
We sat down, too tired to deal with it right then. But . . .
As fatigued as we were, I jacked up her Tracker and put on the spare. We drove the flat to our friendly repairmen at Balthun's in Kankakee. They repaired it for only $8, we returned home, put the tire back on her Tracker and were good to go.
We sat back down to relax, but then Sandy's restless legs started acting up, so I pumped air into our bike tires and off we went for a short bike ride. That helped her relax and then the day was over.
It was a long day and a good one.
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