r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/dingusbob69 • Dec 31 '20

Video Wild Blueberries being harvested

34.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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594

u/V1k1ng1990 Dec 31 '20

Maybe you have 10% less product but you’re only paying 1 guy instead of ten

304

u/therandomways2002 Dec 31 '20

And the guy is inevitably doing it many times faster than the ten put together.

143

u/ondulation Dec 31 '20

You have obviously never picked blueberries with my uncle.

109

u/LazerHawkStu Dec 31 '20

Is this a sexy metaphor??

89

u/VikingRabies Dec 31 '20

Confirmed. His uncle has done all kinds of sexy things with my blueberries.

2

u/Bad54 Dec 31 '20

Yas! 😂🤣🤣🤣

48

u/February30th Dec 31 '20

Yes. Blueberries was the name of the sex worker they chose in Vegas.

7

u/desertman7600 Dec 31 '20

I think 'picking blueberries' was the sex act they chose in Vegas.

3

u/btown-begins Dec 31 '20

Her friends Peaches and Cream were very accommodating as well.

7

u/therandomways2002 Dec 31 '20

Is there any other kind of metaphor? Well, yes, according to my increasingly-irritated eleventh grade English teacher, but I'm still unconvinced.

3

u/I_stole_this_phone Dec 31 '20

Yes. Uncle Felix has been my sexy metaphor since I was 12.

3

u/rambulox Dec 31 '20

If your berries are blue, You're long overdue.

2

u/LazerHawkStu Dec 31 '20

But I thought having blue berries made it taste like pineapple? Something like that

2

u/therandomways2002 Dec 31 '20

What's your uncle's name, so I can verify I've never picked them with him?

Ah, nevermind. I've only picked blueberries (and raspberries, when I found a bush while walking them to Pokeman Go sites) with my pre-adolescent nephews, so I'm the only uncle I've ever picked with.

2

u/ViralAddiction90 Dec 31 '20

I have not, but my uncle says he's really good picking cherries.

16

u/V1k1ng1990 Dec 31 '20

It’s kind of like lawns. Originally they were super bourgeois because they required employees or slaves to hand cut them with scythes. Now anyone can pick up a motorized lawn mower for $50 used

5

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20

Those perfectly manicured lawns that were a feature around the palatial estates found in England, France et al. were all done by hand? I always wondered how they did that between, say, 1300-1900 without motorized tools, but a damn scythe?! That sounds enormously labor intensive and would require a great deal of skill on the part of the laborers to achieve a uniform length

11

u/hazycrazydaze Dec 31 '20

What a life, though. Live on some huge estate and just maintain the lawns and gardens all day? Sounds pretty nice for the time tbh.

2

u/Government_spy_bot Dec 31 '20

That is boojie

2

u/ladylurkedalot Dec 31 '20

I thought it was sheep.

2

u/HorrorScopeZ Dec 31 '20

Juan Valdez does not approve of that message. Discriminantly picks his coffee beans by hand to bring you the best coffee. God rest his soul we lots him early 2019.

22

u/TheCheeser9 Dec 31 '20

Obviously the newer machines have an advantage to them. But it seemed counter intuitive at first glance and fairly interesting to me, so I thought I'd add it.

46

u/FollowTheManual Dec 31 '20

Plus where are you losing that 10%? Probably back on the ground where it becomes nutrients for the bushes anyway

16

u/V1k1ng1990 Dec 31 '20

True, but I bet the price of nitrogen/potash/phosphorus in the form of grown blueberries is higher than the price of concentrated fertilizer

28

u/_kellythomas_ Dec 31 '20

At what point do they stop being "wild" blueberries?

13

u/Salty_Grundle Dec 31 '20

I'm pretty sure it's just the variety. They may be closer to their wild ancestors and the more widely farmed ones. I know from personal experience that the store bought wild ones are quite similar to actual wild.

8

u/V1k1ng1990 Dec 31 '20 edited Dec 31 '20

I don’t think these are wild. Wild plants won’t grow in a huge monoculture field like this. I could’ve been planted and then neglected but wild blueberries would be surrounded by trees and grasses etc.

Edit: I’m wrong see below

29

u/LadyRimouski Dec 31 '20

I live in blueberry country, and blueberries do indeed grow in mostly monocultures like this where the soil is a particular type that's inhospitable to other plants

2

u/V1k1ng1990 Dec 31 '20

Wow that’s nuts, learned something new!

2

u/mind_the_umlaut Dec 31 '20

Enjoy Wild Blueberries™

2

u/Government_spy_bot Dec 31 '20

Literally after my own heart

2

u/seth928 Dec 31 '20

About a year or two after college

2

u/fuzzygondola Dec 31 '20

Likely some of the berries burst when the machine tries to pick them. The loss ratio going up in the autumn makes sense too, because the berries get softer the older they are.

2

u/Government_spy_bot Dec 31 '20

New plants too

6

u/tylerupandgager Dec 31 '20

They took our jobs!

2

u/ZicarxTheGreat Dec 31 '20

And to think of it, the losses will rot and make for nutrients for new plants

2

u/[deleted] Dec 31 '20

This machine vs picking by hand? I'd say it's 1 dude vs 100.

1

u/PunJun Dec 31 '20

And thanks to the speed of the machine and its effectiveness its most likely doing 50% extra if not even more cause it can get almost all of the berries so the loss is quite small in the end

1

u/eney44 Jan 01 '21

And the cost of that machine, upkeep, fuel.