Every year it seems my mom and I want to go berry picking, but always think about it after the season is over! That’s what happened the past two years for strawberry picking! But not this year for blueberry picking!

My mom had heard about Stan’s Berry Patch many times through her friends but had never visited. We decided to note in our calendars when they started their season so we wouldn’t miss it this year!

Blueberry Picking Season

Stan’s Berry Patch for U-Pick Blueberries is located just off of Route 81 and Route 49 in West Monroe, New York. Their blueberry picking season began on July 14th this year. We made it out to the patch last week on Thursday and were surprised by the size of their farm! They had dozens of rows that seemed to be at least .25 miles long.

We walked up to their stand to see how we should go about picking. We had brought those cardboard quart containers from picking up strawberries at William’s Farm Stand a few weeks prior because we weren’t sure if they’d have any containers for us to put our blueberries into. However, the gentleman working gave us two buckets to tie to our waste instead. For two reasons: 1) because the blueberries would be wet and make the cardboard quarts wet and mushy, and 2) that way we can pick blueberries with two hands and not have to worry about holding or dropping anything.

Picking Blueberries

After we picked up our buckets, we walked across the street and another worker greeted us and provided us with our own row for blueberry picking. He even walked halfway down the row to make sure there were plenty of blueberries to pick! We had the row all to ourselves, and the closest people were further down on the rows next to us. It felt like we were in our own little world of picking blueberries.

We had a blast! We picked for about forty minutes, and probably picked two times the amount of blueberries we had planned for. But once we started it was too fun to stop!

In the end, we picked about 9 pounds of blueberries and only cost us about $16. I wasn’t sure what we were going to do with 9 pounds of blueberries, especially since we were visiting Pennsylvania that weekend and they would probably go bad while we were away.

Storing the Blueberries

As we checked out, the worker was telling us about all of the things we can do with the blueberries. For starters, we didn’t need to wash them before we ate them. They use chemicals in the beginning of the season to keep the bugs away but since it’s rained numerous times since, they were safe to eat! Additionally, if we washed them, he said the blueberries would turn soft.

For storage, he suggested we freeze them. If we wanted to use them for baking we could either defrost them or use them frozen. Freezing them is also super convenient for making smoothies (which we have just about every day here). He also mentioned that they have a lot of recipes on their website that incorporate blueberries!

So far, we’ve made mini blueberry muffins, blueberry pancakes and a blueberry-chia seed jam! My mom even wants to go back this week to pick more!

What is your favorite blueberry recipe? Let me know in the comments!

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Location

Stan’s Berry Patch U-Pick Blueberries : 208 CR-84, West Monroe, NY 13167

Coordinates: 43.316, -76.069