r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/dingusbob69 • Dec 31 '20
Video Wild Blueberries being harvested
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u/random_assortment Dec 31 '20
that is a rather large field of "wild" blueberries.
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u/Lou_Garoo Dec 31 '20
I'm not a blueberry expert but they dont' plant this type of blueberry. They grow as rhyzomes - creeping plants so they are very difficult to transplant. Blueberries grow best in areas where there has been a burn and possible clearcut. These are not the gross high bush blueberries you see in stores. At best they may bring in some bees to help pollinate and try to keep other plants from taking over the area.
Of course in New Brunswick which is close to Maine - wild blueberries grow everywhere. You will see people alongside the highway picking them.
And if you ask the blueberry farmer nicely - after they are done harvesting they often let people go in and "glean" the field for free.
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u/Fisk75 Dec 31 '20
You sure sound like a blueberry expert!
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u/Kiz74 Dec 31 '20
a wild bluberry expert
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u/meangreenthylacine Dec 31 '20
I live in Maine and for the longest time I thought I hated blueberries because the first blueberries I remember eating were the huge, gross ones you get in the grocery store (when the native ones aren’t in season). Whenever I told another Mainer about my dislike for blueberries they’d act like I was genuinely sick in the head. But then one day I was hiking and I stumbled across a huge patch of wild blueberries and oh my god, I cannot explain just how amazing they were. I physically could not stop myself from picking and eating them, they’re not even sort of comparable to the other ones. I now ALWAYS stop and indulge whenever I see a patch, it’s a visceral reaction that I have no willpower over.
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Dec 31 '20
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u/1friendswithsalad Dec 31 '20
Mmm hoods! My boyfriend works at a local PNW grocery store, and since hoods are only sellable for 24 hrs after picked, staff get to bring home flats that didn’t sell. We grow a ton of strawberries ourselves, but the hoods are something special!
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u/Lou_Garoo Dec 31 '20
I have the best situation for berries. My mother loves picking berries so I don't even have to go pick the wild blueberries myself!
Spent many boring hours as a child off of dirt roads in burned out areas in the middle of nowhere picking blueberries.
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u/dimprinby Dec 31 '20
Rhizomous plants aren't necessarily hard to transplant. Now, I'm not an expert on blueberries, so take this with a grain of salt.
There are plenty of plants which can be grown anew by planting a seemingly dead rhizome fragment from a parent plant. These dry, gnarled roots can and will grow a healthy plant from what seems like lifeless lawn refuse.
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u/redditor_since_2005 Dec 31 '20
Now, I'm not an expert on salt, but taking a single grain is unlikely to alter the taste of this anecdotal knowledge.
At least not your common iodized table salt, your kosher salt, or even your sea salts. Now, your Himalayan pink salt has a more bold flavour, what with the 84 minerals it contains, but even Himalayan black would struggle to have an impact at the granular level.
Likewise your flake salt, Celtic sea salt, sel gris or fleur de sel might be too fine and mild. I'd imagine we'd have to move on to the big guns, such as your Hawaiian reds or blacks to get some earthy notes from the iron oxides in a single grain.
Without cheating with a hickory or alder cold smoked salt, the easy answer is of course pickling salt, a great finisher with no iodine or caking agent, and very coarse. One grain would do wonders.
Though as I said, I'm no expert.
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u/therandomways2002 Dec 31 '20
Now I'm no expert on amusing parody replies. No, wait, I am. You wrote an amusing parody reply.
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u/dominyza Dec 31 '20
Now, I'm no expert on reddit comments, but I'd say this was a great comment thread.
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u/kingjaffejoffer-c2a Dec 31 '20
This might be the best Reddit reply I’ve read in my life. This reply is more interesting than that blueberry machine gif
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u/AnotherAustinWeirdo Dec 31 '20
TIL artisanal smoked salts are a thing
of course they fucking are
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u/TheMayanAcockandlips Dec 31 '20
I can't speak to all rhizomous plants, but wild blueberries are extremely hard to transplant. They also do occur naturally in large fields like this called barrens
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u/dominyza Dec 31 '20
I don't generally speak to plants at all. Maybe that's why my houseplants die.
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u/8man-cowabunga Dec 31 '20
Yes. Oxalis (ie Bain-of-my-existence) persists this way.
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u/Clamamity Dec 31 '20
Your blueberry knowledge won't save you. I know what you are, you fur-covered DEMON
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Dec 31 '20
Thats totally flat and with no trees.
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u/TheMayanAcockandlips Dec 31 '20
That is what a wild blueberry barren looks like...
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u/SparseReflex Dec 31 '20
My man has never been outside apparently
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u/SebaSeba7274 Dec 31 '20
In Europe blueberries (actually bilberries) do not grow in open fields, at least not where I live. It would be a miracle if you could drive that machine through a patch of blueberries here.
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u/purvel Dec 31 '20
Here in Western Norway bilberries grow in all kinds of landscapes. They grow in pine forests and heather meadows and marshes, and if you want fields looking like OP you have to go above the tree line, or have an area that is grazed regularly by sheep or goats so that trees don't grow taller than the blueberry bushes. I can hardly imagine a field big enough to justify buying a machine harvester like this, but there are plenty of local little patches. You would have to have it on a trailer and lug it from location to location probably. And you would have to sort out all of the juniper berries when you're done :p
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u/SebaSeba7274 Dec 31 '20
From central Sweden, most areas with blueberries here are filled with rocks, trees and uneven terrain.
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u/SunmayLo Dec 31 '20
So they grow like this in Maine, which is where most wild blueberries come from. I’ve literally stumbled on massive multiple acre blueberry fields that are largely untouched by humans. They grow on the sides of mountains as well, wild like that! It’s a great treat in the hot august in Maine! I’m also pretty sure that the “wild” is more in the name, they are significantly smaller than say California blueberries which are very plump and watery in comparison. I have a wild blueberry farm less than a mile down the road and I’m pretty positive they put maintenance to their field, but they are still called wild blueberries. If you haven’t tried them, it’s worth it to get your hands on a pack of Wymens frozen Maine wild blueberries and make a pie.
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u/hesnt Dec 31 '20
I want to make a solar-powered version of this thing and roam endlessly the barren paper-lands of Northern Maine. I would be warmed by the continuous ingestion of blueberries, like an IV drip, so that I wouldn't require clothes. In the winter I would take some of my store of blueberries and shape them into bricks to freeze and build a house of blueberries. As it began to warm I would eat it in the spring.
Blueberries would be my only food, and their moisture content is high-enough that I'd have no need for water. Some years I'd eat so many blueberries that I'd get fat just for fun. My antioxidant value would be so high that I would live for hundreds of years. My flesh would slowly over the decades turn blue and legend would form in my wake.
The stories told by the hikers and hunters that glimpsed me from a distance would be called tall tales, but as they sang my songs and drank their beer tempers would rise to my defense and fists would slam upon the bar to attest to my reality. "Naked blue guy on a tractor isn't just a dream. He stands on top of his tractor and smiles and makes eye contact with you while jacking off in your direction. And then he busts a blue nut into the snow and drives away, manically giggling over the hum of the motor, destroying the silence of the winter forest."
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u/Trevzz Dec 31 '20
Are the wild blueberries in my backyard in Sweden from Maine?
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u/calebmke Dec 31 '20
Europe has a different type of berry they sometimes call blueberries. Wonder if that’s what you have growing by you! In English they’re also called a Bilberry. I never knew what they were called in Swedish, but apparently it’s “blåbär”? They have similarities to American blueberries, but are a different fruit.
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Dec 31 '20
I will never use anything aside from wild blueberries in any of my baking or product development. They aren’t the huge sexy things you see coming out of California. But those things also have practically no flavor whatsoever. Wild blueberries convey plenty of flavor. They make the best preserves, blueberry muffins, and flavorful garnish. Cultivated blueberries can suck a dick and we can leave their vapid presence for those who like them.
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u/SunmayLo Dec 31 '20
The flavor really is where it’s at. Those big blueberries are practically water.
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u/Calliope719 Dec 31 '20
Mainer here! This is what a blueberry barren looks like. Wild blueberries can be transplanted, but its very difficult. My in-laws are in the process of turning their back field into a barren, and basically you just encourage the wild plants to spread by giving them optimal conditions until you have as many plants as you want. Large farms can take a long time to get established, which is why wild blueberries are so expensive.
It isn't unusual to find a field full of blueberries in the middle of the woods that grew naturally. Just watch out for bears!
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u/TurdieBirdies Dec 31 '20
"Wild" blueberries aren't actually wild. Wild in this sense just means low brush variety, the type commonly found in the wild. They are still cultivated.
Regular blueberries come from a high brush variety that has improved yields.
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Dec 31 '20
They may have improved the yields but they ruined the flavor.
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u/TurdieBirdies Dec 31 '20
Completely agree. Low brush variety is best.
Here in Canada, in my city you can find actual foraged wild blueberries at farmer's market for a very limited time per year. Very expensive, but very good. Like the kind you would pick during a canoe trip.
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u/ExpertAccident Dec 31 '20
I used to live in Newfoundland and used to pick blueberries all the time, and let me tell ya, it was like this for at least a mile or two, shit was wicked, those bastards grow very far
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Dec 31 '20
They cultivate fields of these blueberries in Maine. Often called lowbush, they insist that they are wild. I don't know enough about them and their history to comment on their wildness, but they are smaller and usually sweeter than high-bush blueberries (i.e. the kind you typically get in a grocery store in America).
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Dec 31 '20
I’m a peasant, I pick one at a time.
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Dec 31 '20
Username...does not check out
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Dec 31 '20
Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think....
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Dec 31 '20
A little too ironic
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u/Protheu5 Dec 31 '20
Pshah. I am a professional peasant and I pick several at a time using my palm.
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u/SuccYaNan69 Dec 31 '20
During summertime where I live, blueberries are everywhere in the forests, and you can buy small shitty plastic versions of the scoop on those machines
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Dec 31 '20
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u/BeanieMcChimp Dec 31 '20
Someone posted a gif of a guy harvesting blueberries just yesterday. He scooped the bushes with a handheld comb device, like a little version of what’s on that machine. It looked like backbreaking work to me - but I’ve got a bad back.
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u/my-other-throwaway90 Dec 31 '20
As someone who grew up in Washington County, Maine, it's never occurred to me that most people probably don't know what a handheld rake is.
This county produces something like 90% of America's domestic blueberry crop, we are insane about blueberries here... That's how I made my money in the summers when I was a teenager. Up at dawn (which in Maine, during summer, is about 4am), go home when it starts getting dark (8pm). I put in 80 hour weeks some seasons. Didn't even bring a lunch pale because blueberries. Lost my appetite for blueberries pretty quick though, even my shit turned blue (seriously). Sometimes I miss those days.
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Dec 31 '20
I would be more appreciative if blueberries weren't so expensive. It's absurd how much they cost.
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u/NotNok Dec 31 '20
Really? In Aus it’s 3$ for a thing of bloobs. How much do they cost where you are?
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u/iNetRunner Dec 31 '20
What sort of measure is “a thing of bloobs”? Nice that it costs 3 AUD, but I’m guessing you don’t get 1kg or 1L with that, or do you?
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Dec 31 '20
Yeah it’s usually like $3 in the US for 6 oz which means you’re paying $7 a pound. That’s quite expensive
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u/HellCats Dec 31 '20
Which is why I go for frozen blueberries when they are out of season. I can get 3 pounds for $10
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u/GardeningIndoors Dec 31 '20
With the amount of time and effort it takes to grow blueberries it really isn't that expensive. It takes up to ten years of growing a blueberry plant before it starts to become profitable, the same time it takes to grow coca plants which sell for a lot more than five dollars a pound.
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u/tomwitham Dec 31 '20
I spent a summer working at Guptill Farms. Breakfast a lot of times was a handful of flash frozen blueberries. There was a BIG difference between working in the building washing the berries and the folks out in the field raking. It broke my heart standing on the loading docks watching them. I almost felt guilty when I had to put on a winter coat to step into the freezers.
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u/TheDizzzle Dec 31 '20
I googled it bc I was curious. .something like this. seems like a cool low tech option.
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u/TrippyPanda880 Dec 31 '20
I live on a blueberry farm and this definitely isn’t how it’s done here or on any other berry farm that I’ve been on.
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u/cgoldst Dec 31 '20
Sounds like a little bird lifts the front piece
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u/gaytorboy Dec 31 '20
Nice catch! That's wayy too strongly correlated, especially since neither bird or tractor had a set cadence . I'll bet the bird was actually watching the tractor and cheeped every time he raised the bucket.
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u/Studipity Dec 31 '20
the sound is in sync with the movements, the bird would have a delay to react to the thing being moved.
It's a part of the tractor squeaking, likely because it wasn't oiled well enough.
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u/Sambloke Dec 31 '20
Shops: That'll be £10,000,000 please.
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Dec 31 '20
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u/mekawasp Dec 31 '20
They are blueberries, but looks cultivated, not wild.
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u/CrinchNflinch Dec 31 '20
Look pretty tame to me, I heard the wild ones have foam at their mouths.
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u/RandomRoark Dec 31 '20
Berry rakes, even the handheld ones are horrible on the plant, raking leaves, new sprouts and also damaging the bark so the shrub is more susceptible to disease and bugs.
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u/thebigslide Dec 31 '20
They often rotate patches within a barren and burn the patch after a harvest to discourage weeds and promote new growth. Blueberries are prolific after a good burn.
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u/ObsidianUnicorn Dec 31 '20
This looks like when I pick my curls out with an Afro pick, same satisfying bounce back. Unfortunately no blueberries waiting at the end of me brushing my hair.
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u/Backwoodprncss Dec 31 '20
?? I can’t help but to think about the blue berries being left behind ??
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u/Tanglrfoot Dec 31 '20
I love blueberries,and there are lots where I live , you just have to watch out for bears when you’re out picking because they really like them too .
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u/skatakiassublajis Dec 31 '20
I thought they were on trees or bushes
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u/I_am_The_Teapot Dec 31 '20
There are larger blueberry bushes. But these are a smaller bush variety. And I believe farmers will trim/burn the tops of bushes on top of that to keep them short and encourage growth, and make it easier to pick.
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u/Tfire25 Dec 31 '20
Just hear me out. I know this is gonna sound crazy. But the wild bears are going to get unionized and shut this crap down. You better put a cage on that machine.
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u/eatdatbooty416 Dec 31 '20
Those are not wild blueberrys thats a blueberry farm, idk why that sounds funny but it does lol.
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u/DaddySkates Dec 31 '20
As someone who has been harvesting local wild berries for some extra cash to provide for my family since laid off: holy shit balls. It takes me 2 days or more to harvest what he did in seconds. Insane
But I get them in woods on mostly steep terrain so it wouldnt be possible to do it with such a machine.
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u/BighurtRN Dec 31 '20
Wouldn’t “wild” blueberries not be harvested like this? These seem to clearly be farm raised blueberries if a machine like this is harvesting them.
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Jan 01 '21
One way to ruin this video is to think that the blueberrys are human lice and the bush is someone's hair.
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u/peeePOOOOOP Dec 31 '20
wonder what the loss ratio is...
still that machine is insanely efficient