Blueberry Years

My mother and I were blueberry pickers. Strawberries were too much getting down on the ground. And somehow the nape of your neck always gets burned picking strawberries. Blueberries are perfect. We'd head to the pick your own down by the Muskingum River with our big tupperware containers. The farmer would weigh and mark them, so the container could be subtracted at the end of day. Then out to the field to pick and talk over the bushes. Then home to eat and to freeze some to save the taste of summer.

So you now know that I'm predisposed to like Minick's Blueberry Years. However this memoir has great appeal to all readers of quiet memoirs. He tells his family's genetic love of the berries. He and Sarah decide to start a pick your own organic blueberry farm. I loved his reflection on the joys and work of their farm, trying to join the rural community, his neighbor Joe and the pickers.

The blueberry season is almost upon us, so get warmed up for your visit to the fields with Blueberry Years.