Picking Blueberries at The Blueberry Patch

The latest issue of Edible Columbus (Summer 2012) has an article on a berry farm north of Columbus. It is currently blueberry season at The Blueberry Patch, which has something like 27,000 blueberry bushes. I spent an hour or so this morning picking two varieties, a gallon of each. Fifteen pounds of blueberries ripening in the hot sun. Some are going to end up as blueberry jam, the rest will emerge from the oven as blueberry pie or crisp. (Raspberries and blackberries will be in season in mid-July.)

I briefly spoke with the owner, Steve Beilstein, as I was picking. The bushes take about five years to mature, and a mature bush can provide up to six pounds of berries per season. Even cutting that estimate in half, a half dozen bushes could provide around two gallons of berries a year. The Blueberry Patch is a family-owned and family-run farm producing some of the best blueberries available.

What follows is the world's easiest recipe for fruit crisp. It requires about two quarts of fruit, which can consist of apples, peaches, blueberries, blackberries and/or raspberries, cherries, or strawberry & rhubarb, depending on what is in season. You can put it together in 10 minutes.

Hiking in Dolly Sods Wilderness

I spent last Friday morning hiking from Red Creek into Dolly Sods Wilderness with the dogs. It was a simple seven-mile loop hike up Little Stonecoal Trail to the Dunkenbarger Trail to Big Stonecoal Trail and back down to Red Creek Trail. The change in elevation from Red Creek to the Sods is about 1,000'. The last time I made this specific hike was in late July of 2001, the day on which I "discovered" the property now known as Dogs Run Farm, where we live.

Rosso and Lucca on the Dunkenbarger Tr.

I didn't see a single person; it was as if I had the entire Wilderness to myself. The weather was perfect, and I stopped at Dunkenbarger Run and sat on a rock in the middle of the stream to have lunch. The dogs lounged along the bank. This is beautiful land, very boggy and wet, but incredibly lush. The laurel were in bloom and colors and sights were relaxing.

Amanita muscaria

I saw an interesting mushroom along the way down. Don't think I've ever seen one of these live. It is Amanita muscaria. It is halucinogenic, containing the interesting isoxazole compound called muscimol.

Industrially Produced "Organic" Food

• Organic Food

Wal-Mart sells organic produce. So does Kroger, Giant Eagle, and most other large chain grocery stores. Many people, if they can afford the cost differential, will choose organic produce over conventionally produced produce. We feel better about buying the organic produce at Kroger; it makes us feel we are eating healthier food. Unfortunately, we are being duped. The UDSA label of "organic" as applied to food is not what it appears. Little of this food comes from small organic farms and it is not truly organic. It comes from the same industrial producers as conventional food, and a significant portion comes from other countries such as Chile.

Most of the small companies that started out marketing true organic and natural food have been bought by the conglomerates: Horizon Organic Milk by Dean Foods; Odwalla by Coca-Cola; Naked Juice by Pepsi; Bear Naked and Kashi by Kellogg; Seeds of Change by M&M Mars; Garden of Eatin', Earth's Best, and Arrowhead Mills by Cargill, among about two dozen others Cargill owns. Big agriculture has sucked up these profitable small companies and perverted the definition of the word organic, and this fact is not widely known. For example, large agricultural companies (> $1M in sales) constitute just 8% of organic farms in California, but produce 72% of the organic agricultural products. If you live in New York or Ohio, is it responsible to buy organic produce if most of it is produced in California by big agricultural companies and trucked across the country?

Grades are In – School is Out – Summer is Here

My final grades were uploaded to the Registrar Wednesday morning, a vacation email message is set to inform senders that I'm unavailable for the next week, and I'm getting stuff ready to drive to West Virginia. This time, however, I don't have to come back to teach a class. The next items on my calendar are for next Wednesday: a haircut and a riding lesson. After that, moon phases and the Summer Solstice on June 20th at 7:08 PM EDT are the only events. What a nice feeling.

Cue up the Alice Cooper.