Blueberry Harvest and Preservation

There is almost nothing better than picking something at its peak and being able to preserve it to enjoy all year long. It is one of my favorite things to do. So this week when a local blueberry orchard announced on social media that they would be allowing people to pick blueberries for $3/lb, I immediately started thinking of all the delicious things I could do with blueberries. I grabbed the family and we headed out to see how many we could pick.

We were in the field of blueberries for about an hour and had fun laughing with eachother as we picked the berries. The recent rains had caused so many of the berries to ripen, that it didn’t take us long to fill our buckets. When we checked out, they weighed the berries we picked, twenty-seven pounds in all!

We got the berries home and then was time for the real work. First, I had to decide what to do with all those berries. We enjoyed some of them fresh this week, as a snack and on yogurt. I also made a pitcher of blueberry lemonade and a batch of blueberry muffins. But that still left us with a LOT of berries.

I pulled out my Ball canning cookbook and started trying to decide what we would use and enjoy eating most. I canned a batch of blueberry lime jam and froze a batch of lemon peach jam. Blueberry and citrus are a match made in heaven and we will enjoy that fresh summer flavor this winter on bread and other baked goodies. I also canned blueberry syrup so we can make more blueberry lemonade or use on our pancakes or waffles.

Next, I pulled out a new cookbook, the Noma Guide to Fermentation. They have a recipe for lacto fermented blueberries. In the description, they mention making a paste with the fermented blueberries to spread on grilled corn or pork and they also talked about using the berries to make a barbeque sauce in place of the tomato sauce or ketchup. This peaked my interest, so I am currently fermenting some of the blueberries we picked. I will let you know how this experiment goes, but I have a feeling a fermented blueberry glazed pork chop is going to make my taste buds sing.

I decided to vacuum seal and freeze the rest of the blueberries (which is most of the 27 lbs) so that we can pull them out throughout the year to through on our yogurt or in smoothies or to make baked goods with.

Although my little blueberry picking adventure led to an entire day on my feet in the kitchen, I know that my family and I will now be able to enjoy a delicious reminder of a fun summer outing on forthcoming bitter cold winter day.