Got Blueberries?

OK, sorta lame title (playing off the 'Got Milk' fad), but to answer the question: Yes, we have blueberries! 3 pounds of the little blue suckers, to be exact! Louise, Kai & I trundled off to Tougas Farms, near Marlborough, MA, to pick some fruit. It was about 45 minutes away, which is the longest drive we've done as a family in the Element. The Element and Kai handled the voyage like little champions. We've turned Kai around to face forward in his seat, thinking it'll be easier to keep him engaged & non-fussy during our upcoming drive up to Maine, and so far he seems to enjoy it. He still looks out the window w/ a slightly pompous aire about him, but I think he prefers seeing what's going on. It also makes it easier for Louise to do tricks w/ Bunny (Kai's friend/lover/confidante) that keep Kai in stitches.

The farm is actually pretty nice - there's a decent sized playground, a petting zoo w/ lots of friendly goats and a fuzzy chicken, and large fields with blueberries, raspberries, apples,and peaches. Kai enjoyed running around the petting zoo section and almost kissed one of the goats (but probably thought better of it when he remembered Bunny - hell hath no furry like a bunny scorned, so they say!). After a quick snack (where Louise & I polished off too many pastries), we put Kai into the backpack and again trundled across the road to pick blueberries. The deal is, you pay $3/person and get a cardboard box. That money goes towards what you pick. If you pick <10 pounds, its $3/pound. >10 pounds is $2.50/pound, I think. As we walked down to the bushes, we saw quite a few families w/ boxes overflowing w/ berries. But we quickly surmised a couple things: 1) when each berry weighs like .002 ounces, it takes a LOT of berries to add up to 10 lbs. and
2) we need Kai to start some good, honest, hard labor if we're EVER going to get >10 pounds of berries. Its hard work, man! The families with lots of berries had plenty of weary-looking kids shuffling behind their taskmaster parents. With Kai in his backpack, we had no such child labor. Louise & I were at it for almost an hour and barely covered the bottom of the box. I kept glaring back at Kai on my back, wondering when he was going to offer a hand, but no dice. It was probably a bad sign earlier this week when he started mushing the blueberries we gave him instead of eating them - if we tried to get him to help, he'd probably get us kicked off the premises for destruction of property.

Louise & I eventually settled into a rhythm where we'd promise some kid money for the berries they picked, then sent them off to another orchard while we escaped with their stash. Eventually, we collected enough berries to not look like complete rookies and shuffled back to the payment stand, where we high-fived each other over our massive 3 pound haul. Woo-hoo!!! Tomorrow, we plan on using some blueberries to make blueberry pancakes (hopefully Kai can't sqwish them any further when they're already sqwished), bring some to Maine to share w/ our friends, give some to Chippie, and throw some at the cars that vroom by too fast on our road. We're not sure what we're going to do w/ the other 2 pounds of blueberries we painfully picked/stole....

Next time we plan on picking apples - I can't wait!! :-)