Friday, August 17, 2007

Blueberries


My son and I spent the morning picking blueberries at a local farm that has over 5000 blueberry bushes. In late summer the public can go in and pick their own blueberries for 1.60 per pound. Despite complaining the entire time, my son kept pretty good pace with me and we picked about 14 pounds! We are going to have a killer blueberry cobbler for dessert tonight, and the rest of the blueberries will be washed, measured and stored in the freezer in two cup portions. I will use them up over the winter, for muffins, breads and other baked items.

We have four blueberry bushes of our own, and they have been quite productive this summer. Each morning I go out and gather a good sized handful to add to my yogurt. But they are young plants still and it will be a few years before we get a big enough crop that we can store for the winter. Blueberries are a favorite fruit around here so finding a way to keep eating them without buying them from the grocery store is a must.

Tomorrow we are going to the farmer's market to stock up on all of the things that our garden failed to produce this year (ahem, I blame Doug) that I can also freeze, like corn, peas and beans. I am not sure I want to tackle canning this fall so mostly I am going to stock up on foods that can go in the freezer. We are also going to buy some meat there (not much as we don't eat a lot), from a friend of ours who sells pasture raised organic beef, pork and chicken.

Oh yeah, this is an art blog. Huh. I have to spend the rest of today painting and in fact, will have to work Saturday and Sunday as well. I have to do this because I have been procrastinating terribly and only working for a very short period of time each day. Right now I am regretting my enjoyment of a few leisurely days. It would be ok if I didn't have any deadlines, but well, I do and yet I still procrastinate. I have to finish up at least 10 pieces by next Friday. Yikes.

Oh and go check out my website. It has been long overdue for an update and I finally just got the info out to my web person. There are a lot of new paintings up, although you have probably seen most of them here at some point. At least they are all in one place now though, and you don't have to wade through all of this yakking to see the pictures. Heh.

6 comments:

Mary Klein said...

Your website looks great - I like how the image size "bounces" when the next painting is getting ready to appear - very cool!

Tracy Helgeson said...

Isn't that cool?! I wish I could take even a little bit of credit for it, but I would never be able to dream up such a nice detail. Our friend Niklas at IWO Creative came up with it.

Angela Wales Rockett said...

I love blueberries! I wish our freezer was large enough to do what you're doing, but alas.

Your website is amazing, as befits the artwork on it. And the resizing bit is just so fun.

Good luck getting everything done.

indigomar said...

Good job on all the blueberries! I didn't go picking this year, it used to be an annual thing with my kids (all grown up now). The place where we picked was in the heart of Amish country, just beautiful. The website looks great with the new images.

Gesa said...

Hi! Have been lurking for a while but had to smile over the blueberry entry... had a similar moment a couple of days back when i ended up making some raspberry and greengage jam... fruits from the shop but nonetheless :)
Gesa

Tracy Helgeson said...

Hi Angela, Our freezer isn't very big either, but once i cleared out the stuff that's literally been there since we moved in four years ago, I had room for some blueberries!

Glad you like the website.

Mary Ann, I think we will go every year now, even though we do grow our own. It's just a nice meditative thing to do, picking berries.

Hi Gesa, glad you have de-lurked. What is green gage? I have yet to tackle canning or making jams, maybe next year.