WILTON – Marina Galusha put a large blueberry in her mouth and then picked another one and put it in a metal bucket already piled high with berries.
“They’re sweet,” the 8-year-old Chesterville girl said.
Marina and her grandmother, Melissa Knowles, also of Chesterville, who had a container full of berries attached to a string around her neck, were out Wednesday on opening day at the Wilton Blueberry Farm, formerly Harnden’s, in East Wilton.
“We go picking here for apples and blueberries because we think they’re better than store bought,” Marina said. “I just like to eat them plain.”
Nearby, Courtney Webster, 12, of Jay, held a basket half-full of berries.
“There’s a lot of them and they’re pretty big,” she said as she picked blueberries at the farm owned by Irving Faunce and his wife, Jan Collins, of Wilton.
The couple has more than 4,000 blueberry bushes. Collins said Wednesday she expects the season to last until first frost.
“It’s going great,” Collins said. “It’s going to be a good year.”
The snow last winter was so high in some places, Collins said, it covered some of the bushes.
“We didn’t get too much winter damage,” she said. “What we were concerned about were the spring rains.”
There was one week in between rainstorms that the sun was out and the bumblebees were pollinating the blossoms.
“They did a terrific job and I wanted to kiss them,” Collins said.
While most high-bush blueberry growers said their crops looked good and plentiful, several growers of wild, low-bush blueberries said that although their berries looked good, they expected a smaller crop and a shorter season.
Growers started opening Wednesday and will continue to open through next week.
“High-bush blueberries are doing surprisingly well,” state small fruit specialist David Handley said Tuesday. In spite of a tough winter coupled with a cold and soggy spring and a late start to summer, most plants came through the season, Handley said.
Handley said he expected a “pretty good crop.”
David Yarborough, a state blueberry specialist, stated in a July newsletter that he expected an average wild blueberry crop, about 75 million pounds.
Bill Rupert of Dot Rupert’s Strawberry Farm in west Turner and Grace Firth of Firth’s Fruit in New Sharon both said Wednesday that their high-bush blueberries looked good, and they expect it to be the best crop in three years.
Over at Peace and Plenty Farm in Phillips, Hope Griscom said their organic wild blueberries are “looking great” and will open Wednesday, Aug. 3, for hand-picking.
Julie Bergeron of Henrickson’s Farm in Oxford and Steve Cummings of Cummings Blueberries in South Paris both said they expect a smaller crop of wild blueberries this season. Henrickson’s will open Monday, Aug. 1, and Cummings plans to open next week.
Sonja Haverinen said Haverinen Blueberries opened Wednesday in South Paris, and the wild blueberry crop there is excellent but small.
“It’s a very poor year because of all the rain,” she said. “We got severe blight from that so we have a lot less tonnage than we would like but we’re hoping we have enough to meet our customers’ needs.”
This year there are two rakers, compared to 10 to 12 in previous years, and she expects the season to last about two weeks.
“It seems like every year it’s something,” she said. “All you can do is laugh and wait for next year.”
Sue Martineau of Lewiston plans to start picking her high-bush blueberries this weekend.
“It’s the first year for us; it’s not bad at all,” the owner of Sue’s Blues said. The operation, located on College Street and Old Farm Road heading toward Greene, will open on weekends and evenings beginning Saturday.
“I’m very happy,” Martineau said Wednesday. “I hope everything goes well.”
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