Blauwe Bessen

I have a whole new respect for people who work on farms that pick produce by hand. I truly do. 

There's a fabulous blueberry farm called Blauwe Bessen in a town called Meeuwen-Gruitrode, which is about twenty minutes from here:

 Lekker & Gezond means "Tasty & Healthy" :)

 You have the chance to go pick your own berries..as much as your little heart desires! They supply the buckets and you supply the energy. For one kilo of berries (roughly two pounds), it costs four euro (about $5.60)...honestly, that's fantastic! For a little package of blueberries that barely weighs anything at the commissary, it's about $3! I remember going to that farm back in 2009..I thought I wrote a blog on it but apparently not, lol. So, here ya go! 

The weather this week has been less than impressive. In fact, it's been cold and rather soggy. I have no idea what's up with summer this year, but whenever a sunny day graces us with it's presence, we take advantage of it! Well, today was that day, so I decided to get John out of the house and we headed over to Blauwe Bessen since some recipes I wanna make require blueberries, they're a fabulous source of antioxidants and John really likes them as a snack.

We got there, grabbed our buckets and made our way over to the designated picking area. On our way over there, we saw several older couples walking out with two buckets (each) filled to the brim with berries! YEAH! We were gonna get some good sized berries if that's what they were leaving with! Haaa..psssych! About thirty minutes into picking, it became VERY clear to us that those people must've been picking right when the farm opened (which is 9am) and we showed up around noon. The berries on the bushes were very small, nothing along the lines of what we got the last time we went picking. After an hour of walking, picking, squatting, and reaching, we managed to get only one kilo. Le sigh.

From there, we walked over to the area where they empty out your bucket, weigh it and let ya know what the total damage is. In addition to the berries you pick, you can also buy other goodies they sell there like blueberry wine, syrup, jam, juice, etc.

They even have some FABULOUS blueberry pie! Oh man, I really had to refrain from buying some because I'm watching what I eat..but it's SO good! 

Of course, I snagged some blueberry juice because I like making myself some "blueberry soda" with it. You take some of the juice, add soda water and about two tablespoons of splenda and you're good to go! It's AWESOME! 

My fabulous blueberry soda:

In addition to the juice, I also picked up some blueberry wine. Oh, I know..I'm not much of a wine person, but theirs is the only stuff I actually like!

And, I scored some blueberry tea :)

Oh, and then there's the blueberries. The bowl in the middle is what we actually picked..the rest, I bought from the farm. You can clearly see a difference in the size of the berries from what we picked verses what they were selling. Quite frankly, I was totally ok with buying the rest of the berries since I'll be making muffins and other various items over the next few weeks and it was still cheaper buying 'em from the farm verses dealing with the commissary.

Don't judge me!