Blueberry Break

Today we decided to take a break from packing (which, in all honesty has yet to really begin) and, instead, we headed out to Chester for the 6th annual, "Blueberry Days of Summer" festival. We love festivals. And this one was especially lovely, very old-school and genuine. There was blueberry tasting (who knew there were so many varieties of blueberries?), water balloon tossing, dog duck herding, a birds of prey demonstration, a pie-eating contest, tractor rides, face painting, llamas to pet, fun live fiddle music . . . and, of course, blueberries to pick! We ended up bringing home 12 pounds of berries to eat, bake with, and freeze for the winter.

Zeben was delighted by the blueberries all hanging right within reach, and he wasted no time before picking a handful and popping it in his mouth. He was quite the little "Sal," (we even started calling him that). I was initially a little concerned about him potentially eating unripe berries, but I got over it (and he quickly learned to avoid the green ones at least). I will be very curious to see what his poop looks like tomorrow, though! He was stuffing his cheeks pretty much the whole time we were picking.



Luke and Jaz had huge amounts of fun running between the rows of berries and getting "lost" from us. They did a pretty good job at picking, too. They really love having a job. Times like these remind me that this is, instinctively speaking, probably the kind of thing they should be doing every day. Gathering food for the winter. It definitely agreed with them.


They were especially impressed and horrified by the kids' pie-eating contest (no hands allowed!), though they assured me that they never want to actually be in that kind of a contest themselves. Jaz said, "I would take one bite and then I wouldn't want all that sticky, sticky on my face!" And, Lukas pointed out, "did you notice how the girl who won looked like she was kind of choking at the end and like she might puke?" Yep. It's totally fine with me if the kids don't want to join in on that kind of old-fashioned fun.

One of the highlights for me was the birds of prey demonstration. The handler was hilarious. And it was amazing to see such big birds up close. Little Sal the bird-lover was most excited about the owls, and started chanting, "O-wl, O-wl, O-wl" while waiting impatiently for the handler to get the barred owl out of its box. My favorite was the golden eagle. Wow.

All in all, it was an "unproductive" day very well spent. And we will be remembering it for months to come while we reap the benefits of our hard work. Yum.