I Bought a Rake


It looks like I'm not the only one who recently purchased some metal hardware. I have this food obsession with blueberries. I love them. If I see a breakfast cereal that contains blueberries - I have to try it out. I don't like those puffed up, supersized berries from New Jersey (sorry Kreblog). Instead, the way to go of course is with wild from Maine and NH.

Way back in the day, I used to go hiking with my parents up Mt. Cardigan (over in western NH). The summit was covered in blueberry patches. My parents would spend a few hours picking blueberries and they'd leave me alone to go explore the various granite ledges, cliffs, and hard to reach areas that kids somehow have an uncanny knack for finding. We'd hike back down and my parents would have massive ziplock bags full of wild blueberries. My mom would make pies and muffins from the haul and the freezer would be stocked with extra berries in reserve. Maybe a few years ago I saw a Chronicle story about the Maine blueberry harvest and they showed people mowing through the blueberry bushes using a hand rake. Naturally, I stowed this piece of information away in my brain and on and off I've made attempts to find one of these rakes for purchase. So this summer rolls around and the blueberry rake idea takes over my thoughts again. I do a more thorough google search and I find a website for a business that sells custom made blueberry rakes. Needless to say, I bought one.

You don't have to go far to find wild blueberries around here. Mt. Blue Job over on the western edge of Barrington has an extensive blueberry field near its summit tower. The area is maintained for blueberries and the volume that is there is pretty staggering. I saw people with buckets just picking away at them. I wonder if they were jealous of seeing me mow through bushes and coming away with pints of blueberries with ease. Seriously, this rake is all business. Mrs. Rants and I spent a couple of hours collecting berries and we walked away with a ton! The downside to the rake is that it also collects a fair amount of leaves, dead branches, and stuff which requires some patient sorting and cleaning. I spent the evening watching the Sox and picking out all this crap. But after it was done we had ziplocks full of the blue gold. I made a blueberry pie and freezed the rest. Considering the cost for pint sized containers of wild blueberries found at local grocery stores, I literally paid for the cost of the rake within 2 hours of using it. Not too shabby!