r/oddlysatisfying • u/colapepsikinnie • 1d ago
Harvesting blueberries from a blueberry barren
355
u/C-57D 1d ago
it's called a barren?
282
u/MuffinRhino 23h ago
It refers to the agricultural land they're on. Blueberries need very acidic soil, so acidic most plants can't handle it. So if you've got a very naturally acidic property and can't cultivate anything else, you do blueberries.
Pine barrens are similar - dry, shitty, sandy soil that only the pine trees do well in.
79
u/Syssareth 22h ago
Blueberries need very acidic soil, so acidic most plants can't handle it.
Oooh, this might be why every time we buy a blueberry bush, it dies immediately. Our water is mildly alkaline and we were just putting them in our usual potting soil.
92
u/LegendOfKhaos 21h ago
I'm picturing an intelligent alien species transporting humans to another planet with an inhospitable atmosphere and wondering, "Why did they keep dying?"
17
u/silverjudge 12h ago
Is my human getting too much excersie? Too little water? Not enough air that's 90% ammonia? I just can't keep one alive.
2
u/Betelgeusetimes3 4h ago
I have around 10 blueberry bushes of different varieties in my yard. Some in beds I built some just in the soil, the ones in beds do better because I can adjust the soil easier. They all get sulfur at the beginning and end of each growing season and then ‘acid fertilizer’ a couple times throughout the year. The stuff with hydrangeas on the package works well.
17
1
u/DeepSpaceNebulae 2h ago
Pine trees. Not only do they thrive in acidic soil, they make the soil more acidic when they shed their pine needles.
60
40
12
13
81
u/AdEnough2267 1d ago
I was just wondering how blueberries are harvested. Tech is pulling target content straight from our brains now.
29
u/_its_a_thing_ 23h ago
I worked the blueberry barrens in Downeast Maine one summer. Wild blueberries are low like this. We did it hunched over with hand rakes about a third the width of this harvester. My back has never been the same. That was in 1980 or so.
12
u/PercivalSquat 21h ago
Yup my dad used to spend summers as a kid raking blueberries in Maine. One summer some guy got his hand stuck in the machine that separates the berries from the leaves and stems and mangled it up pretty bad. Dad stopped doing it after that.
2
u/Many-Day8308 16h ago
Did it in the 90’s in Cherryfield. I see the old rakes posted from time to time in what is this thing and immediately can smell the sun, sweat, blueberries and immodan(sp?) pesticide
2
1
1
235
89
u/Guillotine-Wit 1d ago
Is the blueberry barren near the cranberry bog?
44
20
u/jokke420 1d ago
I live in Finland and i can find both 500m from my appartment😂😂
2
u/cardew-vascular 20h ago
I live in Canada and they're not that close because if I go 500m I'm still in my yard, but my neighbourhood is a mix of cranberry bogs and blueberry farms. We have a cranberry festival yearly.
2
u/doritobimbo 17h ago
Should ask one of the cranberry workers how they feel about the spiders. I hear it’s a job one can only do if they’re genuinely totally fine about spiders. Cus they hang out in the bushes, but when the bog gets flooded for harvest they float up with the berries and naturally attempt to escape to the nearest high point - often a human in waders lol
64
u/redditproha 1d ago
I thought blueberries grew on shrubs
31
29
u/selja26 1d ago
These are low shrubs, knee height max. This is called European blueberry in America I think. Here it's just called blueberry, we pick it in the woods and the tall shrub bluebs are sold in stores. The forest ones are dark in the centre and very juicy, sweet and sour, very concentrated taste.
11
u/Laslou 22h ago
I was shocked and disappointed the first time I ate American blueberries. They’re not blue inside, instead some greenish color and taste like nothing.
7
u/selja26 22h ago edited 19h ago
I grew some of American type in my garden last summer and they were good. I think, from what I read, at the commercial plantations they pump the shrubs with water and fertilizers so the berries grow large and the taste gets diluted. I didn't water mine too much and they were small and tasty. It's a shame forest blueberries don't do well in gardens, I would find a way to transplant some.
2
u/doritobimbo 17h ago
Okay so you’re telling me there’s a blueberry out there in the world that isn’t fucking disgusting? … I had an abscess in my mouth once and when it drained it tasted like blueberry pancakes.
I’d love to like blueberries so I try some a couple times a year. They’re so bad though
3
u/Laslou 17h ago
The one on the right is the real deal: https://imgur.com/a/uptU4Mc
1
u/doritobimbo 17h ago
Gotcha. Will be on the lookout. Maybe order seeds and grow some myself. The idea of messing around with soil acidity makes me feel like this: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/kemist
21
u/svennesvan 1d ago
The species in this video is European blueberry, also called bilberry. It's completely different from American blueberry, it's smaller and has a more intense flavor.
7
u/Laslou 22h ago edited 22h ago
I’ve heard that the reason you mostly only find fresh American blueberries in stores (here in Sweden at least) is because you can’t commercially grow the European, they need to grow in the forest. Maybe this is some hybrid? I may be misinformed though.
EDIT: “Fun” fact! We have a lot of berries here in Sweden, a lot of money in that industry. It’s a bit shady also, relies on kind of modern slavery. People from SE Asia are shipped here on dubious promises (kind of like the construction workers in Qatar) and they get to roam the forests for berries. And during Covid the industry almost went bankrupt because they couldn’t “import” workers from other countries. 🫠
EDIT2: Another fun one. Most of our berries are exported to Asia. Instead, our berries (in stores) are imported from the Baltics.
6
u/FlyingVMoth 22h ago
I think every "rich" country has the same problems... No local Canadians want to harvest strawberries and raspberries. It's usually South Americans that do it.
3
u/Laslou 22h ago
Yeah. But I got the impression that in the US or Canada they at least get paid. Probably cash and very little. Here it was more like a slave camp. They got food etc, but had to work to pay off their “debt” for travel, passports confiscated etc.
1
u/FlyingVMoth 22h ago
Yeah ok, I know we had some scandals these past few years, but I don't think it was like a slave camp.
5
u/Frosty-Age-6643 22h ago
United States has the same issue. But what we’re doing now is deporting everyone who worked on farms and crashing the economy so that Americans can get back to the fields where we belong.
4
u/aDinoInTophat 21h ago
No problem growing or harvesting bilberry commercially, although it's a bit more demanding than most berries. The real reason is as you noted the way cheaper option of importing pickers rather than cultivating.
Most Swedes that want blueberries more than occasionally go pick and freeze ourselves. Just one day in the forest is usually more than enough for a year.
4
u/Minnesota-Mike 22h ago
Blueberries plants in Alaska are exactly like this. Small berries tight to the ground, the plants are so springy, coily.
2
1
u/anyodan8675 18h ago
High bush blueberries are like a shrub. They are bigger and have less flavor than low bush blueberries which are tiny, delicious, and harder to cultivate m
112
u/AdditionalAir4879 1d ago
I feel like this method must be so distressing for the plants. But man I love me some blueberries
149
u/TwilighteTide 1d ago
They evolved to handle some roughhousing – wild berries get munched by bears and trampled by deer!
1
20
5
u/TonyAbbottsNipples 1d ago
If they're distressed about this, they're gonna hate finding out about fire pruning.
3
11
19
u/Atomidate 1d ago
Here I am wondering if the grass I'm going to spring overseed can handle semiregular foot traffic, and there's this guy with the BlueberryRaper2000 going nuts without a problem.
17
16
9
u/ThatGasHauler 1d ago
I remember doing this as a teenager fer spending cash. No machine, handheld mf’er. Don’t remember how much I was paid…….wasn’t enough.
1
8
u/PontificatinPlatypus 1d ago
Looks like plenty left behind for whatever hungry bears might be around.
46
u/EvelcyclopS 1d ago
That is not oddly satisfying. That is anxiety Inducing. How many crushed blueberries are there? How is he driving over the bushes? Is he crushing the plants as he drives?
5
u/_its_a_thing_ 23h ago edited 10h ago
There's only one harvest per season. The plants are woody and strong and die back in winter. They're also burned every two or three years (or were back in the '80s and 90s when I was in Maine).
12
u/Either_Topic4344 1d ago
Redditors will spend more time worrying about crushed blueberry plants than dead people and it's hilarious
5
u/TheLordFool 1d ago
I thought this was way bigger than it was until I saw the dude standing on it
3
6
3
3
u/J1mj0hns0n 22h ago
How the hell do we manage to burst them in the plastic package placing it delicately into the car when this is how they're picked. "Here's a two foot drop onto metallic plate from a giant comb jerking violently back and forth"
2
2
u/friendlyapostate69 22h ago
As a kid growing up in Maine, it's a right of passage raking blueberries by hand for at least one summer. BACKBREAKING work man. This thing is cool af
2
u/C-Nast49 19h ago
I always find the engineering that goes into these machines to be so fascinating. Like, there was a need to harvest blueberries faster, so someone designed a machine to be as efficient as possible at one thing and one thing only: harvesting blueberries. So cool.
2
u/ilikenoodles2222 10h ago
Ok I’m high but I had no idea if that was a hand held decide or being filmed from a helicopter. I was on the edge of my seat til they zoomed out.
1
1
1
1
1
u/garden-wicket-581 23h ago
reminds me of raking wild blueberries in Maine .. picking/sorting out all the detritus is a huge pain..
1
u/Terrible_Discount_37 23h ago
I need this to pick up dog poop. My St. Bernard and Great Pyrenees are hard to keep up with.
1
1
1
1
u/PM_ME_YOUR_DONAIRS 22h ago
These look like wild blueberries, which grow in eastern Canada and Maine. It doesn't matter if the machine hurts the plant stems, as they're usually mowed or burned anyway after the berries are harvested.
1
u/devildocjames 22h ago
This is kind of cute, for some weird reason. I think it's the tiny harvester.
1
1
u/deviltrombone 19h ago
Probably doesn't drop as many as I do when washing them. lol
So how many do you usually end up sacrificing to the garbage disposal god? My number must be 1-2 per handful.
1
1
u/HybridPower049 19h ago
I would give the obligatory "blueberries are purple" but they do indeed look sufficiently blue here. Satisfactory.
1
1
1
1
u/misterfistyersister 17h ago
This is how my huckleberry spot looked right after my wife told her coworker.
1
1
1
u/Dannysmartful 14h ago
Never heard of a blueberry "barren" usually some something is "barren" it means nothing grows in that area. Which is why it's called "barren."
Now I want fresh blueberries.
1
1
u/Inferno_ZA 13h ago
Saw a while back that another way is to flood the field and the blueberries float to the surface.
2
1
1
1
1
u/mistyfrequency 7h ago
I thought the machine was going to be massive until I saw the mans feet. Don't know why I thought that, as blueberries are tiny.
1
1
2
u/ThinNeighborhood2276 1d ago
That must be incredibly satisfying! How many blueberries did you end up harvesting?
13
u/SirWigglesVonWoogly 1d ago
Maybe ask this person first who probably reposted it from someone else.
1
1
u/Foghorn225 1d ago
But is there a channel that the machine drove through? I didn't see one, it looked like the plants would have just been crushed .
2
u/Southernor85 22h ago edited 22h ago
There are hundreds of "channels" the whole front part is a giant fork, the tines grab the bush at the bottom and when pulled up the rooted bush stays down but the berries pop off
-1
u/Half-PintHeroics 21h ago
No, we are the ones who say what's what because we used the words first. The American ones are bilberries, and moose are elks too by the way.
-6
u/youareactuallygod 1d ago
Mm yummy so the machine eats them and then I eat machine poop? Mmmmm more machine poop yummy yummy
-5
1.1k
u/geekyheart225 1d ago
This isn't how the blueberry bushes on my Stardew Valley farm look...