The First Wild Blueberries

One of my favourite times of year has arrived… wild blueberry season! I kept checking the bushes each time we visited the forest and the first berries were finally ready a couple of weeks ago. Yas!

We eat a million berries in the forest, save a few to eat fresh at home and freeze the majority for Winter. I mostly used them for blueberry porridge last year but I’d also like to make pies and jam this year. Plus they are excellent on waffles.

I looked back at the first blueberry photos from last year and realised I’d worn exactly the same outfit. Scott’s theory is that I need to dress like a blueberry to pick blueberries. The hat is to keep the sun off my head and ticks out of my hair.

I found a tick crawling down my leg in there (the second in a month). Luckily it hadn’t latched on and I later realised it was probably because our mosquito spray helps prevent tick bites. We’re TBE vaccinated but still don’t fancy a bite because they can also carry Lyme Disease, and we don’t want that either!

My mouth was as stained as my fingers.

A handful of the people we’ve seen have nice foraging baskets but most reuse large yogurt pots with handles (so do we). We decant the berries into a tupperware box in my rucksack because neither of us fancy tripping over a tree root and spilling the whole lot on the floor. Which I’ve almost done a couple of times.

Summer has been very hot and dry. Many of berries shrivelled before the rain arrived, and sat on bushes with scorched leaves. We managed to find a couple of good patches though.

We walked up to one of our favourite lunch spots overlooking a lake — which is full of lily pads at this time of year. As you can see, the view is fantastic! So grateful to have places like this within walking distance of home.

It was a really hot day so we stopped off for a wild swim on the way home. This was a new but excellent discovery…

The water felt amazing — pockets of warm and cool marbelled together. And I ended up nose to beak with a duckling! A group of them were paddling past and I stopped swimming so they didn’t get splashed or scared, then one of them came right up to my face. That was the closest I’ve ever been to a duckling and I can confirm they are even cuter close up.

We’ll go blueberry picking many more times before Summer is over but the first pick of the year always feels the best! Hungry bear mode has been engaged.