CRESTVIEW — Belinda Holley’s Indiana relatives will have blueberry cake this weekend thanks to her son Kevin’s recent visit with Crestview kinfolk.
Family members recently took Kevin blueberry picking at the Smith Farm in Laurel Hill. There, they gathered 5 gallons, and Kevin took a pound home to his mom in Mobile, Ala. “It was a lot of fun,” he said. “They are really good blueberries.”
Since the 1920s, blueberries have been a part of local culture, encompassing pies, muffins, juice, jelly, preserves, cakes, wine, music and even landmarks.
Blueberry Curve, the wide sweep in State Road 85 just north of Winn-Dixie, was named for its abundance of wild blueberries. However, it recently lost a large swath of blueberry bushes when workers cleared land for a Dollar General.
“That made us sad,” store-site neighbor Sandra Dreaden said. “Our four boys grew up picking blueberries out there and selling them. That was their summer earning money.”
FRESH FRUIT
Since the beginning of June, bucket-toting folks have visited farm blueberry patches or favorite “secret” woodland stands of wild blueberries. Or they just surveyed their backyard.
"I pick out of my yard," Terri Marie Owens said. "We have about 20 huge bushes and get a plenty." Bonnie Clary does the same. "Very blessed with blueberries this year," she said.
At local blueberry farms, it's been a good season. No late frost damaged this year’s crops, and rain was sufficient to grow sweet, plump berries.
“We’ve already exceeded the poundage we picked last year, and we’re hoping to be open another two or three weeks," Baker U-Pick Blueberries owner Mary Richardson said.
“We had slightly over 64,000 pounds picked last year,” her husband, John Richardson, said, adding 70,000 pounds were harvested as of Tuesday.
The Richardsons — who started blueberry farming after retiring four years ago — are delighted to see their business growing.
“We have a lot of repeat customers,” Mary Richardson said. “We have more pickers coming locally. When we first started out, most of our pickers came from Fort Walton Beach and down that way.”
Sarah Hawkins, of Crestview, is one of those local customers. She said the fruit's freshness is the deciding factor. "I will always pick homegrown over supermarket produce," Hawkins said. "I can taste a huge difference, I don't have to worry about how far it traveled and sat in the store, and I'm able to verify where the produce came from."
TASTE TEST
Judy Smith said her family doesn’t advertise their Laurel Hill farm’s blueberries, “but people seem to find us.”
The Smiths’ blueberry bushes also produce throughout the season, luring returning customers.
“We were out there again before breakfast,” Trecia Chedister said. “We’ve been there three times already. It’s like pick one, eat one, pick one, eat one.”
Blueberry farmers accept that their customers can't resist sampling the wares.
“Part of the experience is testing them,” Mary Richardson said. “We see it as marketing. John teases the children all the time: ‘Should I have weighed you before you came in?’”
But some farmers who harvest berries, in addition to letting customers pick some, don’t get as much opportunity to sample their crops.
“We grow the stuff but we don’t ever have time to go home and cook it,” Kathy Brooks of Brooks Farm in Baker said. “By the time we go home from the fields, we’re ready for bed.”
HONOR SYSTEM
Some farmers operate their you-pick fields on the honor system.
Judy Smith relies on her customers to tell her how much they picked, and said she’s come home to find money left at her front door.
“Everybody’s pretty honest. We don’t have a problem,” she said. “If they’re going to come all the way out here just to steal blueberries, I don’t want to see 'em anyway.”
Blueberry season typically lasts until the first or second week of July — and devoted farmers like Mary Richardson know that better than anyone.
“About six weeks every year, that’s about all my life is: blueberries,” she said.
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PLACES TO PICK
Baker U-Pick Blueberries, 5949 Dairy Road, Baker. 537-0340. $1.50 per pound. Open 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Buckets and bags provided.
Brooks Farm, 5645 Gerald Brooks Road, Baker. $5 per gallon or $1 per pound, 902.3465. Bring a container.
Shockley Springs Nursery, 7097 Old River Road, Baker. 902-0160. $1.25 per pound. Open Saturdays and Sundays, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Buckets and boxes provided. www.shockleysprings.com/blueberries.php
Smith Farm, Laurel Hill. $4 per gallon. Go to the end of Cadenhead Road to Morning Glory Lane. When the road ends, turn right and go to the end of the driveway. If no one’s around, leave your payment at the door. Bring a container.—
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DID YOU KNOW?
By the end of the 1920s, more than 1,200 acres of North Okaloosa County cropland were devoted to blueberry bushes, making the fruit one of the region’s most successful crops.
“A high-grade berry of excellent flavor, size and marketable type was developed by Mr. M.A. Sapp,” the county Extension Department reported in the late ‘20s.
The book “Crestview: The Forkland” states that at the end of the 1929 season, 15 train carloads of Okaloosa County blueberries were shipped to northern markets, plus smaller package loads shipped all over the country.
Sapp’s rabbit-eye variety continues to be one of the most popular local blueberry cultivars.
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BLUEBERRY CAKE
Visiting Mobile, Ala., resident Kevin Holley shared his mom, Belinda’s, blueberry cake recipe.
2 cups blueberries
2 cups sugar
3 cups self-rising flour
1 cup Crisco oil
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
Mix all ingredients together. Batter will be thick. Stir in blueberries and mix well. Bake in a floured bundt pan at 350°F for 1 hour or until done.
Optional glaze:
¼ cup water
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla
Bring ingredients to a boil and brush on warm cake.
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THE BLUEBERRY WALTZ
The Crestview area’s blueberry culture gave rise to a popular dance tune that found its way onto parlor pianos throughout the country when Crestview residents Fidlin Brown and Prof. Seger’s “Blueberry Pie” waltz was published by the S.J. Brown company of Cincinnati in 1924.
Here’s the chorus:
“For there’s nothing like blueberry pie, say I
Oh, how I love blueberry pie!
Since the time of the flood,
There’s been nothing so good,
So luscious as blueberry pie.”
Source: “Crestview: The Forkland”
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: You-pick berry farms: Part of North Okaloosa culture (RECIPE, SONG)