If I could nominate one fruit to be the national fruit of the United States, it
would be - the blueberry. Sorry, Apple...Americans, we fiercely guard our
independence, we cherish our freedom; we're even known to be a bit wild...Let's go
with that. Because that, my friends, is also the spirit of the blueberry.
Even though it's native to North America - even though it's been growing here for
thousands of years - it remains totally untamed until very recently.
You know, my grandmother never even saw a blueberry as a young woman, and she ran a fruit
stand in Brooklyn! It wasn't until the early 1940s that farmed blueberries
really took off nationwide. Before that, if you wanted blueberries, you had to
find and pick them in the wild...So why was it so hard to farm the blueberry?
To understand that, we have to find out: Blueberries - How Does It Grow?
Our investigation starts in the storied Pine Barrens of New Jersey,
whose official state fruit is the blueberry!
This is Whitesbog Village, the birthplace of the global blueberry business. Today, it's a National Historic Site,
and home to a big annual blueberry festival. A century ago, it was the first
place anywhere to commercially farm the High-bush Blueberry.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, stop the music. We're not going to whitewash history...To fully appreciate the
blueberries' place in American culture, we have to go back to the huge role it
played in the lives of our native people. For them, the blueberry was food; it was
medicine; it was a spiritual symbol. In fact, they called them "star berries", for
their perfect five pointed star at the blossom end. They were a gift from the
Great Spirit. From roots to leaves, Indigenous people use every part of the
blueberry bush. They brewed a tea for women in childbirth, they boiled the
blueberries down into a thick cough syrup.
They also dried them - so they could be eaten to the long lean winter months.
The waves of European immigrants who came to this country embraced this new fruit,
but none of them as deeply at the Native American peoples.
It wasn't until 1911, that blueberries got serious attention again, this time from the daughter of a
cranberry farmer. She lived right here at Whitesbog - then New Jersey's largest
cranberry farm. Elizabeth Coleman White, a heroine in the
male-dominated stories of American agriculture. She had the vision to expand
her father's cranberry operation to include blueberries in the summer.
And so she invited Frederick Coville, a botanist who had just made a
groundbreaking blueberry discovery. Previously, people had dug up wild
blueberry bushes, and replanted them in their best soil. They nurtured them like
they would any other fruit crop, only to watch them die. Coville figured out a
strange but fundamental secret: blueberries demand highly acidic soil -
soil that can't support most other crops. And Jersey's barren pinelands were
perfect for blueberries. They grew wild everywhere. But farming is all about
growing a consistent crop, so White and Coville set out to find the best of the
wild blueberries that they could then cultivate and eventually crossbreed.
I should probably note here that there's not just one kind of blueberry, just like
there are many kinds of apples - there are blueberries with different colors, sizes, tastes, and textures.
White enlisted locals to search the woods for large berries.
She named each plant they choose to cultivate after the person found it.
Now to grow a whole field of Rubels, White and Coville used the same cloning
technique that's used today. For that, we're heading to Atlantic Blueberry Company.
Once the world's largest blueberry farm, it's still the largest in
New Jersey. The US - by the way - is the worldwide leader in cultivated
blueberries. While Canada is tops for wild ones. What's the difference?
Wild berries grow on low bushes found wild, then fertilized and cared for, like
farmed ones. But we're following the story of the cultivated High Bush, which
provides the lion's share of the world's fresh blueberries. The life of a blueberry
bush begins in the nursery. Small cuttings from a chosen variety are
planted and nurtured, until they're strong enough to be transferred to the field.
A modest harvest can take five years, but
a bush bears fruit for up to 50. Blueberries are born in the spring, after
the bushes bloom with bell-shaped flowers. You can see that star shape
at the tips of their petals. When the berries emerge,
they're the lightest of green. Then they deepen into reddish pink, and finally
into their famous dusty blue. To extend the season, most farms grow at least
three different blueberries - ones that ripen early, midseason, and late.
So if you think your blueberries taste different throughout the summer, you're
right! They are not all the same variety. But there's an even deeper secret here: the
best blueberries, ones with flavor that would knock your socks off, they are not
sold in stores. The big farms don't grow them - they're too risky. The berries are
too delicate, or the bushes too sensitive. But you might find these tasty
ones at Farmers' Markets. They're also available in seed catalogs - so you can
grow your own. That means you can pop these little powerhouses of Vitamin C
and A, plus antioxidants whenever you like.
When it's time to harvest, blueberries don't make it easy.
They don't all ripen at the same time on the bush, so pickers need to harvest with
as much care as they do speed, taking only the ripest of berries.
Just to get this thing on is difficult...okay I'm ready...and it's a gentle...I'm
watching...a gentle roll of the thumb, that gets these off. Oh...uh oh...see that's not good...
These guys have to have the lightest of hand. This sort of frosted color of the
blueberry is a protective coating - it's called the "bloom". And if you touch them too much,
they turn really dark like that, which means that the coating is off, and it
means that the shelf-life of these berries is cut by...two or three days.
(Denny): I really don't call them "pickers", I call them professional harvesters. There's this
idea that anybody can come out here and they're going to come up with a...with a
great quality berry...It's not gonna happen!
(Nicole): No...you don't want to see inside my bucket...(Denny): Oh no...
(Nicole): No...I know...look at them...look...can I have a sticker?
(Denny): Yes...you are gonna have a sticker...we are gonna give you a sticker...
(Nicole): Good job...(Denny): Good job...you know...
I am NOT getting the hang of this...
At Atlantic, berries sold fresh are
harvested by hand, but usually after two pickings, machines do a final sweep,
shaking the bushes to release the remaining berries. Since they may suffer a
few knocks, they go straight to the freezer to be sold as frozen berries.
Meanwhile, hand picked berries hit the sorting line.
A color scanner weeds out under ripe berries - anything that isn't blue. These may go into juice, purees, even
pet food. The berries then drop onto a pressure plate. Softer, over-ripe berries
moves slower than firm one, so they are rejected from the line and often wind up as frozen.
Thanks to the pioneering work done right here in New Jersey a century ago,
blueberries are now farmed all over the world, from New Zealand to the
Netherlands. And the antioxidant craze has helped global production triple in
the last decade alone. It's a huge accomplishment for a wild little
American berry - or maybe it was destiny...After all, the Native Americans believe
the blueberry was a divine gift - and so did one of our most American of authors:
"When I see as now in climbing one of our hills, huckleberry and blueberry bushes
bent to the ground with fruit, I think of them as fruits fit to grow on the most
Olympian or heaven pointing hills. It does not occur to you at first that where
such thoughts are suggested is Mount Olympus, and that you who taste these
berries are a God. Why in his only royal moment should man abdicate his throne? (Henry David Thoreau)
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