MAINE BLUEBERRIES

I know, I know-it has been awhile. Our touring has slowed down some. Earlier this month we did another overnighter to Calais, ME & St Stephens, NB. We went because there was a Chocolate Festival in St Stephens. The home of the very popular Ganongs Chocolates is in this town. There are a couple short videos to watch and some displays to look at but-most of all, there a platefuls of the chocolates around the rooms for sampling. We tried our share and are proud to report we left there without buying ANY candy at all. In both Canada and Calais I was able to do some genealogy research as my family were all in that area in the mid 1880s. Do not find much, a great-grandmother's obituary & some middle names. Got some tombstone pictures in the Calais cemetery. Just a couple nice days. It is blueberry season now & we got to see some pickers in the field. The Maine blueberries are the small low bush type, tiny but so sweet.

You can click on the picture to make it larger and see the tool used to get the blueberries in. It is sorta like a rake/shovel combo. They walk along with it at ground level sorta scooping the berries in. The ideal day is a windy one to blow away the weeds and stuff. After they fill a container it is taken to a winnowing machine that sorts the rest of the weeds & stuff from the berries then they go into, I think they said 26 qt boxes. These pickers get paid by the boxes they pick. Used to be mostly teens doing it but of course like everything else now migrants come in & pick the crop. So, again the kids miss the oppotunity to learn 1. about the past & 2. job ethics. It is backbreaking work no doubt but most of us survived it. Mine was potatoes.