at the foot of the Stellenbosch mountain
pick some blueberries and drink freshly made berry juice
We traveled to the blueberry farm where you can pick your own berries from the bushes. We traveled to the farm early in the morning, arriving at the farm as they opened their doors. The sun in Stellenbosch can get very hot very quickly, so we planned accordingly.
As we arrived, the organisers or managers from the farm gave us a couple of containers with the Blueberry Bar logo on it, and we were ready to pick some berries!
So, please join me on this virtual journey of the blueberry picking, as I show you the beauty of the mountains all while you pick, and the constant allure of placing these succulent in your mouth! (To the frustration of my fiance, I always eat more berries than which I pick, which is not a good thing! She always picks enough berries before me, so I always hand her my bucket...)
Without further ado...
Arriving at the Farm
As you arrive at the farm, you will navigate between a couple of containers with oddly coloured dots. I say this because one would have thought that it would be blueberries! I digress...
You collect your bucket or container from next to the berries, where you will then return to, because of the delicious juices they have, but more on that later.
Getting Ready to Pick
As you grab your bucket, you are directed to the block which has ripe berries that you can pick. There are a couple of different species of blueberries, and not all of them are ripe at the same time. My fiance struggled for a couple of months to get us to the farm, as they were closed for quite a while due to giving the blueberry bushes some rest.
The berries are not planted in the ground, they rather grow them in containers. At first, this was rather odd to me, why would they do this? But I soon realised that it might be due to their ability to control the ground in which the berries grow. As far as I know, blueberries need acidic ground. But in the Cape, I don't think the ground is acidic. So, if they do this to control the acidity of the ground, this makes sense!
Ready... Set... Go...!
We walked to the various blocks we were allowed to pick in. We were excited, as we could already see some of the blueberries, ripe for the picking!
But not all of them were ripe, but it nonetheless made for beautiful photographs!
Then, we could start to pick! The bushes were relatively small, as none of them reached more than 1.5 meters. The berries on the bottom looked the best, as we could see in their big size that no one picked them yet!
An Abundance
It did not take too long for the bucket to be full. We could not believe the amount of blueberries that hung on the bushes, it felt like a gold mine.
All the while we picked, we were surrounded by the beautiful Stellenbosch Mountains.
Our buckets filled quickly with the blueberries, and we really enjoyed the experience, the abundance, and the opportunity to see how these berries grew.
The weather warmed up as we picked the blueberries. The Stellenbosch heat really started to pick up.
And we got very dehydrated...
But there was a silver lining!
The place where we picked up the buckets had some freshly squeezed blueberry juice.
So we ventured that side.
Berry Juice at the Finishing Line
Hidden in the fridge was ice cold, blueberry juice, some with added beet juice. These small bottles contained some of the best tasting juice I had in a long while. After picking for an hour or two, we really needed the refreshment.
They also made some other more healthy antioxidant drinks. Only from the label of ingredients, you can see how healthy it is!
Postscriptum, or So the Apple Falls from the Tree Next to the Blueberry
As we got into the car, we saw a lonely apple tree next to the blueberries! This was quite funny.
In the end, we enjoyed this adventure, like the many other berry picking and flower picking adventures.
For now, we have to eat all of these berries!
I hope that you enjoyed this virtual tour with me.
Happy travelling!
All of the musings and writings are my own. The photographs are my own, taken with my Nikon D300.