Growers praise this year’s Upper Valley blueberry crop

LYME — This blueberry season has been particularly well-rounded for many in the business.

The picking season began just over a week ago and has been going strongly, with early summer rains opening up to sunny days — just as the berries began to ripen en masse.

“Last year was booming,” said Sherman Phillips, co-owner of Kingland Farms in Lyme, which specializes in pick-your-own blueberries. “And this year, it’s only day four, but it’s on track to be bigger than last year.”

Still, the weather has varied greatly from farm to farm and is becoming increasingly uncertain.

Last year’s strong output came following a near-total loss of the season’s fruit in 2023 due to a late frost striking while the berries were flowering. With no berries, the plants grew “like crazy,” Phillips said.

Along with her husband, Doug Balch, Phillips runs Kingland’s blueberry operation, referred to as Hewes Blues, named for the family who originally settled the farm.

Hewes Blues has approximately 3,000 blueberry bushes that can be handpicked by the bucket, until the season ends in early August.

Last year, the successful season enabled them to donate 600 pounds of blueberries to Willing Hands, a Norwich-based nonprofit that recovers food to expand fresh produce access.

This year, it’s the weather that’s created the right conditions.

“May was exceptionally wet,” Derek Schroeter, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service, said, based on data from Lebanon’s climate station. Since then, precipitation has been running a bit below normal — good for blueberries.

Even though the past two seasons have been good, the farmers know that the increasingly uncertain weather can go in any direction. “The weather’s becoming more and more unstable and unpredictable,” Phillips said.

Others in the business agree.

“There’s no such thing as a normal season anymore,” Carol Stedman said Tuesday on her porch at Clay Hill Corners.

Stedman runs the Hartland farm specializing in pick-your-own blueberries with her husband, Marty Banak. They also have a farmstand with an assortment of their own vegetables, herbs, fruits, granola and shiitake mushrooms.

A warmer climate has been pushing harvests earlier and earlier. Historically, picking began at the very end of July, but for the last few years it’s been at the beginning of the month, Stedman said.

Wellwood Orchards, another farm with pick-your-own blueberries, has gotten unusually favorable blueberry weather over the past two seasons.

“We don’t get the same climate as everybody else,” said Linda Friedman, the manager of the Springfield, Vt., orchard. “I don’t know why, it’s just (that) we’re in a good spot.”

Even though the rainfall earlier this year hurt their strawberry yield, because strawberries have an earlier season, this year’s blueberries and raspberries at Wellwood are doing “wonderfully,” Friedman said.

But unlike Wellwood and Hewes Blues, Clay Hill Corners was rained out of last blueberry season, leading to a low quality fruit.

“The blueberries were water balloons,” which led them to soften and ferment in the sun, Stedman said.

This year, though, the berries are much better. “They’re not water balloons, they’re very tasty, they’re firm,” she said. “It’s like these are the most beautiful berries we’ve ever seen.”

The growers said the coming week, like the last, will have the strongest output of the season. Their farm’s 700 bushes have around 20 varieties of blueberries, yielding roughly 5,000 pounds per season.

Clay Hill Corners is open until Labor Day, and has a variety of blueberries ripe for the picking until then.

Stedman encourages kids to eat as many blueberries as they can on her farm, despite some of the parents’ guilt over the freebies.

“I want children to eat real food,” she said. “I get parents who feel so guilty. They’re like, ‘Oh, we should weigh the kids!’ (But) that’s fine.”

Clay Hill charges $4 per pound of berries, which decreases to $3.50 if more than 10 pounds of berries make it to the register.

Last week, Cailin Berke, a longtime Upper Valley blueberry picker, was enjoying the start of the pick-your-own blueberry season at Hewes Blues in Lyme.

“The berries are delicious, the best we’ve ever had,” Berke said. “And you can pick them by the handful.”

Berke had attended two of the first four days of the farm’s season.

“We just can’t get enough of them,” she said, with her two sons, niece and dog in tow.

Lukas Dunford can be reached at ldunford@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.