We planted some seed and starters in my home garden this weekend. Here in Oregon, the growing season is long and these plants will come to maturity late in the fall. Tending our backyard plot is a drastically different task than that of tending full sized fields, both in scale and technique. Pests and weeds that you can ignore in your home garden must be carefully prepared for and managed when you are farming a field for production.

But as I looked at our garden last night, this collection of little green sprouts got me thinking about how the act of planting is an essentially hopeful one. I am waiting eagerly (anxiously?) to see how our at-home plantings progress and hoping that we’ll have some edibles come fall. It seems so incredible that these tiny hardened seeds become tender little sprouts that will grow, flower, and fruit into something many thousands of times its original size.

Even with all the knowledge that our farm team possesses and the preparation they go through in the winter, we still must work in concert with nature — we make predictions and we respond to what really comes our way in the natural world. Tracking the progress of our crops is a huge task accomplished by a team of field scouts and farm managers. Digital photographs are visual data that inform our farming techniques, and soil testing tells us what nutrients are present (and lacking) so that we can see with great precision how to prepare the soil for the needs of a crop.

Despite these and other very precise farming methods at Stahlbush, those orderly sprouts poking up through the ground and reaching for the sunshine are always a joy and a surprise in their own way — though they are expected they are still newcomers, and we can delight in the newness, the greenness, the fragility that demands we welcome them with care. To me they are the reward of an optimistic and hopeful enterprise.

First day of blueberry harvest! The fields are a sea of violet, the berries large and fragrant, and the farm in full swing (we are also harvesting broccoli and early butternut squash..). Here is the journey a Stahlbush Blueberry travels before it comes to your grocery store freezer.

First of all, blueberry bushes take time to come into full production… anywhere from 6-7 years to really yield highest quality and quantity of fruit. Blueberry bushes can then go on to produce fruit for nearly 30 years. We grow many varieties of blueberries so that the fruit ripens over a little longer period of time and doesn’t overwhelm our ability to harvest the fruit at its peak. The Stahlbush blueberry fields are coming into their prime fruit-bearing years and take a lot of love and attention year round with trimming and tying up, weeding, watering, and feeding the plants nutrients.

Once the bushes set fruit, our “birds of prey” sound machine keeps flocks of birds from coming in and feasting. A few deer wander through, but in general, the deer don’t care for the openness of the fields and prefer to hug the perimeters along the Willamette River. The ripe berries are harvested by hand, early in the day if possible to prevent harvesting during the desiccating hours of hot sun (it’s 90 degrees here today in Corvallis). Machine picking technology is available and we may go to this method at some point. But for now, hand picking is the best way to get the most high quality fruit and care for the bushes. The flats of picked berries are brought into cold storage right here at the farm and queue up to be sorted, washed, and frozen.

This morning I walked into the chiller and the first thing I noticed was the blueberry-infused air….an absolutely delightful aromatherapy moment. The blueberries are poured onto a moving berry-ladder and then dropped into a large bin where they are air cleaned. This removes leaves and twigs. Next the blueberries gently roll over a de-stemmer and past an optics system that hunts for and rejects any imperfect berries, i.e. under ripe, mashed or misshapen. Then it’s off to a cool water wash that removes any remaining dust particles. They are then carried past a team of inspectors looking for any blueberries that might have snuck through unripe or still wearing a stem (this morning we saw a couple blueberries that had a tiny bit of blueberry flower bud attached. Didn’t hurt the taste a bit!)

After a final rinse, the berries are ready to enter the freezer tunnel and be flash frozen individually (we call this IQF or Individually Quick Frozen.) You might think that these processing steps would in some way damage the fruit, but as I looked at the finished IQF Blueberries this morning coming off the line, I was astounded by how perfectly formed the fruit is. A perfect frozen blueberry takes masterful, sustainable farming and an exquisitely high level of expertise at the plant processing level. The blueberries are dropped in a bag and shipped to your store and all you taste is Oregon sun, rain and the terroir of the region. Full disclosure: I work here at the farm, so my high opinion of these blueberries may sound biased. But nevertheless I am a berry aficionado and these are the best blueberries on the planet! (And for further evidence here’s one of my kids grazing like a bear cub out in the Stahlbush blueberry fields…)