Blueberries are looking like they’re going to be a bumper crop this year as long as we can avoid significant mummyberry. I’m not convinced of that, because the amount of maintenance I put in on the blueberries was not as much as I would have liked. On the other hand, we had almost no mummyberry last year, so fewer mummies=fewer infecting bodies.

That said this looks closer to a 1000 pint year as opposed to last year’s 250 pint year.  Yipes. For those that want to know when they’ll be ready, the typical answer is 2nd week in July.

On the garlic front, the scapes on the german white are ready to remove.  They’re perfect eating right now.  I’m going to try and get some out in front of the stand in the next week.  They’ll be cheap. They make AMAZING pesto.

In other housekeeping, we’re just trying to keep up with stuff this year…Having a 2 year old makes it hard to get anything done.  We’re navigating through it.   We may wind up having to put the farming on hold for a few years, but this summer will bear that out. Stay tuned.

Our blueberries got a 1st prize ribbon, however.  It might have had something to do with the fact that there was no category for blueberries and I filed under “other” berry.  I suspect that they’ll have that fixed in time for next year’s fair.  In any case we won!

Pictured left is the garlic.  Sadly all of the fine work Kathleen did on presentation was for naught.  We had to cut them down to 5 individual heads.  So it goes.

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup yellow cornmeal
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup milk
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup blueberries

Here’s our favorite blueberry pancake recipe.  It honestly takes just a minute or two more than any box mix you might buy and it tastes far, far better.

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Serves 3-4

1 Egg
1 Cup Buttermilk*
2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil
1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup Buckwheat Flour
1 tbsp. Sugar
1 tsp. Baking Powder
1/2 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 Cup Blueberries (fresh or frozen).

• Combine and Mix Wet ingredients in a Medium Bowl.

*A note on the Buttermilk…we often don’t have it on hand so I splash a little bit of Vinegar in a measuring cup and make up the rest of the cup with milk.  I let that sit for a minute or two before putting it in.

• Put in the dry ingredients and mix.

• Finally, mix in the blueberries.  In the case of frozen blueberries, we microwave them for just a bit to thaw them before putting in the pancakes.  Our winter pancakes tend to be greenish purplish because of the blueberry juice…

To deal with this, I’m learning the art of breaking tasks into smaller pieces. We’ll see how that works out this summer.

This morning I woke up early and got out to the blueberries and garlic and did a few things that needed doing.

The garlic is progressing nicely.

First off, here are some pictures of the building we call the chicken coop.  It’s in rough shape as you can tell from the pictures.  Basically, the entire back of it is shot.  And our roofing is basically a tarp that is probably on it’s last year.  This is the year that I need to cleanup and fix our other barn so that I can move most everything out of this…  It’s all a bit daunting as I have less time than I ever had.  Still, what needs to be done, needs to be done.

Ah…now on to the scenery.  Everything’s still quite brown out there, but I expect to see a LOT more green within a week. In these pics, you can see one of the old farm cars. The second picture is looking north along the farm road into the neighbor’s field.  The last picture shows you why we have a no vehicles policy on the road at this time of year.  Strictly hoofing it!

And on to the blueberry row.  I’ve told myself I’m being more aggressive this year with pruning, and I am trying to take anything too tall to reach out of the picture.  I figure it will be another 2 years before I really have things the way I want them.  The second pic shows you what we’re up against.

And finally, garlic!  It’s impossible to make out in the first picture, but they’re popping up all along the row!!!  2nd picture is a better focused pic of a shoot.  And lastly…I took a picture of the Jerusalem Artichokes that I dug up for dinner!  Yum.

So back to the business of pruning.  Our blueberry bushes are tall.  I’m trying to remedy that, but every time I dig into a bush and think I’ve finished, I then step back.  The view from a few steps back often look like I haven’t done enough.  I am cutting out the stuff that is too high to reach, as well as any of the dead wood.  It just doesn’t look like it to me when I’m done.  I do know that whatever I do now will make my life easier come summer.   I just have to keep telling myself that.

I’m taking a clear out the middle approach to encourage new growth there. Next year when some of that growth has established itself, I’ll hack off the rest of the overly tall stuff. Some of these bushes have grown to over 10 feet tall. For us short folk, that’s not very pickable.

I really need to be done with pruning by the end of April, so if I can get 5 hours a week in for the next 6 weeks, that means I’ll be 2/3′s of the way through the bushes. Past years have had a 1/3 of the bushes pruned, so I’m probably being overly optimistic. So it goes.