Experience Blueberrience

What do three city girls with newly acquired paychecks (well, two of us are old enough to earn paychecks) do for a rip roaring good time on a wickedly hot Saturday morn in sunny So Cal? Hop in an air-conditioned vehicle and mosey our way north of LA over the Ventura County line for climes less molten, and more importantly, bouts of blueberry picking! Or as my husband characterized our efforts, "So you’re going to pay to play migrant farm worker for a day?" Yes, we were about to embark on a seemingly bourgeois exercise, but so what!

Anyhow, last Saturday was all about that bulbous berry with the purplish bluish exterior and what a Saturday it was. We circled the wagons at Chez Linoleum, loaded for bear with commuter mugs o’ coffee, a chilled cooler ready to accept the bounty of fruit we were sure to procure, a full tank of petrol and super-sized jugs of sunscreen, ready to pay tribute to the traffic gods in order to ensure safe journey northward. Tributes complete signaled an engine at the ready and we were off, traversing the golden landscape adjacent the 101 to seek out a veritable blueberry bonanza at Underwood Family Farms in Somis.

Reminder to self, next time map the directions online before leaving confines of ChezLinoleum…

Um, yeah, the city girls cum farm dames three drove around aimlessly for a while like a car full of directionally challenged, yet sure their direct descendants of homing pigeons, dudes. And fortunately, like many a male who has driven around for hours without the help of a car equipped with a nav system or that of a friendly local gas station attendant, we made it to our destination eventually, in only about an hour door to, um, dirt. Not bad and none too worse for the wear.

Hopping out of our vehicle we were immediately blessed plentiful harvest by the property’s goat overlord…



Now, needless to say, I lack a green thumb. A fuzzy, yarn-encrusted thumb I got. But green? Ahhhh, no. However, I have my moments when the opportunity for harvesting fruit from the bush is seemingly more appealing than spending the day sitting in mi casa, drapery drawn, A/C at max, boo-tay planted in chair beneath heaps of wool, sweaty digits grappling with hooks and needles. Oh yeah, when the thermometer is clocking in at 100 plus, the whole fruit plucking thang in regions frore (okay, not exactly frore, but definitely below 90 degrees Fahrenheit) sounds pretty darn sweet!

The offspring was chomping at the bit to get her hands dirty…



And dirty they became as we ferreted about the shallow bushes in search of budding blue bulbs of sweet joy. Take a look-see at the commemorative montage of the experience…



Montage Legend

Top left to right:
- Transportation out to the fields.
- A day at a real farm definitely beats a day at the Cube Farm. Hands down!

Middle left to right:
- The flower that begets berries blue.
- Before the extraction.

Bottom left to right:
- 3 lbs. of beauteous blueberries!
- Three dirty purple mits.

Dirty digits, slightly disheveled and none too much damage done to wallets we left the farm loaded down with the fruits of our labor to finish off our Saturday with a bit of antiquing (wallets were emptied during this portion of the program), ice tea sipping and burger munching in old town Ventura. What a fabulous way to spend a Saturday! Heaps o’ thanks go out to this chickadee, the mastermind behind Experience Blueberrience.

Thank you Bri for showing Lena and me the way of the berry…