Blueberry Squicking

Yep - you read that right.....the children, Grandma Marion and I went blueberry squicking today.  As you might imagine, our adventure started like most others of the sort.  We had planned a day of blueberry picking.  Carrying their buckets, the children scampered along the rows until we finally reached our assigned rows of 26 - 28.  At first, it seemed as if each bush was laden with blueberry treasure.  However, as is human nature, after a short while of picking in the hot sun, the next row always looked more full of blueberries than the one we were on.

The boys each carried their own bucket, Emet stopping about every 20 blueberries to show us how many were in his bucket.  This year Caleb was pretty focused on making sure he filled his bucket as full as possible all on his own. Anna Ruth didn't carry any bucket but the round tummy that was quickly filling with blueberries as she went along.  All ate their fair share of blueberries, however...including Mama and Grandma Marion.

As we neared the 3 hour mark, we were all tired, sweaty and sunburned...but we picked on, knowing Anna Ruth had a limited amount of time remaining.  I looked over to check on my little blueberry muffin to see that she had changed her tactics and was now leaning over my 3 gallon bucket of blueberries eating directly from the freshly picked pile.  A few minutes later, I glanced over to see that she was no longer eating but was digging her hands into the blueberry treasure, taking little fist fulls and squishing them!  Yikes!  I was able to divert her back to the bush, then continued my picking.  Glancing over once again after a period of prolonged silence, I saw she was back at the bucket....but this time, she had tipped the almost full bucket over, spilled them onto the ground, and was now happily putting them back into the bucket.  Arg!  I went over to once again divert her and pick up the treasure.  As I was frantically picking them up, she had toddled over to another small bucket, picked it up, and had added it to my now growing pile of blueberries on the ground.  I was starting to get overwhelmed by my inability to stop the blueberry tornado.  Ah, but the fun had not yet ended....not for Anna Ruth!  I tried to heave my sore pregnant hips from their crouched position in order to physically remove her from the scene, but before I could do this, Anna Ruth had discovered the joy of blueberry stomping....yes, just like they do with grapes, but the goal here wasn't blueberry wine.  By now, I had collapsed back onto my rear (the getting up wasn't so successful) and was laughing along with everyone else.  Grandma Marion came over to help me salvage our, now twice picked crop and get the remainder into the buckets before any other disaster befell them.

All in all, we ended up with about 25lbs of blueberries and a whole ton of memories!