A Winter’s Rest
Down east Maine is downright sleepy in winter. Once snow blankets the barrens, Wyman’s agronomist Bruce Hall says, “it seems like the only buzz happening around here is at the high-school basketball games.” The Milbridge-based company is among the state’s largest growers and processors of wild blueberries, cultivating some 12,000 acres in Maine. Look out over the barrens this time of year and the only signs of next year’s crop are the reddish-brown stems poking through the snow cover, creating a ruddy stubble across the horizon. Wild blueberries took root after the Ice Age, and most of each plant grows underground, using a system of horizontal shoots called rhizomes that helps them withstand the harsh temperatures and driving snow. Though all remains quiet on the barrens, the Wyman’s processing plant still thrums six days a week, packing frozen fruit for customers around the globe.
Opening Days
By mid-March, “things really start to come alive here,” Hall says. As soon as enough ice has melted to make the roads passable, crews head into the fields to size up the crop’s potential. By mid-April, the barrens are carpeted in pinkish-white, bell-shaped blossoms, and during the weeks that follow, the region begins to stir as pollination time approaches. As soon as the flowers open, in May, more than 160 species of native bees perform the critical task of pollination, assisted by thousands of hives that growers bring in. By the first day of summer, the flowers shed their petals and make way for pinhead-size buds that will swell and turn green, white, pink, and finally a distinctive deep blue. In the pruned fields, a leafy-green canopy emerges, the first sign of next year’s crop.
Peak Season
An old wild-blueberry adage holds that “you can bake a pie by the Fourth of July,” but while it’s true you can pick some berries on Independence Day, the harvest doesn’t hit full tilt until the end of the month, when berries reach full size — a quarter of an inch in diameter, about the size of a pea. Thousands of seasonal workers pour in from around the world to work the harvest — the Wyman’s workforce alone more than doubles, to 500 — and you can hear half a dozen languages spoken at the grocery store. While some crops are collected using handheld rakes, the vast majority of the fields are harvested mechanically. Then, the berries are sorted, cleaned, and frozen within hours of being plucked from the vine. The harvest is completed by mid-August, but the Wyman’s processing plant continues at full steam, freezing fruit from fields in Canada.
A Fiery Finish
After Labor Day, once the harvest ends, the tourists retreat, and the kids head back to school, the barrens abruptly quiet down. It’s pruning season, and growers mow the plants that have just borne fruit, in order to manage weeds and pests and stimulate plant growth for their next season. In recent decades, the millennia-old tradition of burning the fields for pruning has been largely replaced by mechanical mowers, which allow growers to cut the plants to an ideal height without damaging them. The leaves are left to decompose in place, creating a natural compost that returns nutrients to the soil. Crushed berries left over from processing get put there too, which helps the soil retain moisture. “Pruning really sets the stage for a high-quality crop,” Hall says. By mid-October, all the barrens turn crimson, as chlorophyll drops from the leaves into the rhizomes, to nourish next year’s crop. Against a fall foliage backdrop, the entire horizon of wild-blueberry country looks ablaze, creating a leaf-peeping experience like no other.
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February 15, 2022 at 04:00AM
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Wild Blueberries: A Fruit For All Seasons - Down East
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