Opening Day is finally here

Tuesday, June 8th will be the opening day for berry picking here at RabbitEye Farm – FINALLY!  We are a pick-and-pay berry farm and we grow our berries with organic practices. Produce that is fresh from the farm retains the most nutrition and the most flavor.  Patience has not been easy these past few weeks, but we are very happy to tell you the berries are ripening up nicely.  Thankfully, Mother Nature has once again provided fruit for all of us to gather and enjoy now or freeze some for later months.  (I will post my favorite cobbler recipe below which is great with frozen berries – no thawing required!)

Picking berries is a naturally social-distanced activity.  We have plenty of room for everyone to spread out, but if you would like to schedule a private 2-hour pick for your group or club on a Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday we can arrange it.  There is a minimum purchase of four buckets on a private pick.  Additionally, GrayHill School Farm will also be offering educational food-forest tours on those days, separately. More on that in another blog.

Tuesday June 8th’s schedule will be Morning Pick: from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM, and Evening Pick from 5:00 PM to 9:00 PM. (That’s an extra hour in the evening.) This takes advantage of the cool morning temperatures, and also shade.

Both blueberries and blackberries are available, and they can be picked into the same bucket because the price is the same. Just so you know, we have more blueberries than blackberries since they are a little slower to ripen than the blueberries.  They are on a different slope and didn’t have any issues with the late frost.  Their ripening schedule seems to be pretty much normal this year.

What do you need to bring?

You don’t need to bring anything because we supply a bucket with a liner. (You keep the liner to conveniently carry your berries home.) Our bucket size is a generous 2-and-a-half quarts, and the price is $15.

Rain or Shine

We are open rain or shine, and our schedule is every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday until the berry season ends. The hours will be the same each day – Morning Pick: 8-11AM and Evening Pick 5-9PM. Berry season usually lasts until the end of June, but this year could be different and we may even see the season extend into July!  With the way this season has started, it wouldn’t surprise us.

Blackberry/Blueberry Cobbler Recipe

In an 8 inch square baking dish, mix:

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3 cups fresh blackberries, blueberries or a combination (I figured out that berries that have been frozen individually work just fine without thawing.  If they were frozen individually first, like on a cookie sheet, you can measure them easily.)

3 tablespoons white sugar

1/3 cup orange juice

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

…set this aside for now.

In a bowl, combine:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 pinch salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

In another bowl, mix together:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Then mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.  Drop this batter by rounded tablespoons on top of the berries that are already in your baking dish.  Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown.  (I usually double this recipe.)  This is adapted from a blueberry cobbler recipe on allrecipes.com.

Berries are not ripening as expected

As you can guess, it’s June 2nd, and the berries are not ready for picking yet.  Honestly, they aren’t much closer than they were last week. The blueberries, in a normal year, are ripe and ready to pick by June 1st and sometimes earlier. So we are hoping that 2021 is just an “odd” year and not an “unfortunate” year. (more on that below)

Blackberries

The blackberries usually ripen a little later than the blueberries by a few weeks.  Their normal ripening time is about the second or maybe third week of June so they are still within their normal range of ripening.

Blueberries

On the blueberries, we are hoping that this is just a strange effect stemming from odd weather patterns this spring.  If it isn’t, then we may have an issue this year.
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In using organic practices, we cannot spray when a problem arises, rather we have to use natural tactics to combat trouble. Several years ago, we started mulching with a thick layer of pine straw every winter to battle an issue with the berries drying up before they ripen.  The pine mulch provided a physical barrier layer preventing carryover problems from the previous year.

We don’t have very many pine trees, and buying pine straw is not feasible because it takes trailer-loads to mulch all the berries. So, we have raked it ourselves on various other properties. This past while though, pine straw has become much harder to come by, and this year it just didn’t happen. We are still keeping our fingers crossed that the old issue is not back, and the berries are just late this year.

We will keep you posted

In any event, Mother Nature’s plan is difficult to predict.  We just have to wait and see and we will let you know.