Pick your own blueberries at Centerburg’s Berryfield Farm

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Almost every­one loves blue­ber­ries. They’ll buy one of those 8-ounce pack­ages at the super­mar­ket, and soon after they’re home the blue­ber­ries are gone. Eaten by the hand­ful, that half-pound of blue­ber­ries lasts about 10 minutes.

Most blue­ber­ries we get at the mar­ket are adver­tised as fresh, but they can’t be that fresh shipped from dis­tant states like Michi­gan, Maine, Florida or Cal­i­for­nia. Some even come from Mex­ico, Chile or Argentina.

It is pos­si­ble to get fresh blue­ber­ries right here in Cen­tral Ohio, fresh-picked right off the plant; you can even pick your own, have fun out­doors, and save money along the way. All you have to do is drive to Berry­field Farm in Cen­ter­burg and pick all the fresh blue­ber­ries you want for $2.85 a pound.

Berry­field Farm is a retire­ment busi­ness ven­ture of Mike Furbee and Mag­gie Fen­ton. Furbee is in the process of retir­ing from West Vir­ginia Uni­ver­sity, Fen­ton is a retired IT consultant.

A widow and a wid­ower, the blue­berry afi­ciona­dos met seven years ago; they were look­ing for a place to retire some­where between Cen­tral Ohio and Mor­gan­town, West Virginia.

“We wanted it to be in the coun­try, have room for a big gar­den, room to grow things, some woods, a pond, a house that might need some work but not a com­plete re-do,” Fen­ton said. “We looked at a num­ber of won­der­ful places and one of us would look at the other and say some­thing like: Well, house is nice, place is nice … so we move here. Then what? After months, maybe a cou­ple of years of this, it became obvi­ous that we would not be happy retir­ing to a life of play­ing golf or bridge.”

In late sum­mer, 2010, Fenton’s daugh­ter, Leah, sent her an email that she had received from the owner of Berry­field Farm. He said he was sell­ing and wanted to give his pick­ers first dibs at the place. Leah thought her mother and Mike should look at it. They did. They talked. They stud­ied. And they bought it.

What they bought was 20.5 acres with almost four acres planted in four high-bush blue­berry vari­eties – Blueray and Blue­crop that were ready for pick­ing in mid-June, Cov­ille that are just now hit­ting their peak, and Elliott’s that should pro­duce for another month.

It wasn’t exactly a turnkey pur­chase. The pre­vi­ous owner had not been able to main­tain the farm well for a num­ber of years due to some health issues and it needed tend­ing; and the crop is a favorite roost­ing place of star­lings, an inva­sive species that can wipe out a blue­berry crop if not kept at bay. Last year they were almost wiped out by star­lings, this year they’ve net­ted a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the field.

“Mike had grown blue­ber­ries many years ago; and I’d grown up on a farm and have grown things all my adult life,” Fen­ton said. “We did this with eyes open … or at least mostly open. We knew it would be a lot of work, but some days I think we under­es­ti­mated just how much it would be.

“This is our sec­ond sea­son,” Fen­ton con­tin­ued. “The first win­ter, we pruned in foot deep snow and 10 degree weather. We can prune from the first freeze in the fall until the first sign of growth appears. The first two win­ters were pretty intense because the field hadn’t been pruned in awhile, but we’re hop­ing it will be a bit eas­ier if we keep up with it now.”

Furbee said Berry­field farm is tech­ni­cally not an organic oper­a­tion, but it does come close. Furbee and Fen­ton fol­low Fruit Grow­ers Asso­ci­a­tion plant­ing and cul­ti­va­tion guidelines.

“We take a sus­tain­able approach to tend the berries,” Furbee said. “We don’t want to eat berries that have been sprayed and treated with chem­i­cals, and we wouldn’t sell our cus­tomers any­thing we wouldn’t eat.”

And cus­tomers are the true test of pro­duce qual­ity, Furbee said. Some have returned three, four, even five times this sea­son to pick more berries; many cus­tomers drive an hour to get to Berry­field Farm.

“Our cus­tomers are great; they’re sup­port­ive and have great ideas for us,” Furbee said. “We’ve had a lot of first timers who’ve never picked a berry in their lives and some who have been pick­ing berries since they could walk. We have mul­ti­ple gen­er­a­tions who come with chil­dren and grand­chil­dren. Most all of them enjoy the peace and quiet of being in the country.”

Berry­field Farm is also turn­ing into a fam­ily project. Fenton’s son Scott has been a bee­keeper for over 12 years (beehavenacres.com). The farm has four — soon to be nine — hives that help pol­li­nate berries and pro­duce honey sold dur­ing berry pick­ing sea­son; daugh­ter Leah (baddogacres.com) is an herbal­ist and has done herbal walks and lessons at the farm to teach peo­ple how to use native plants to make teas, balms and poultices.

That’s not all, Fen­ton said. A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the acreage is planted in tree vari­eties suit­able for Christ­mas trees.

“We didn’t know we were get­ting a Christ­mas tree farm too until a friend from West Vir­ginia who owns one there came to visit and told us that’s exactly what we had,” Fen­ton explained. “Now, he comes yearly to help us trim the trees. We plan to open for a cou­ple of weeks before Christ­mas for peo­ple to cut their own tree. We also had a wreath-making work­shop before Christ­mas last year using ever­greens, holly and other native mate­ri­als from the farm. This year we might add a Thanks­giv­ing cen­ter­piece workshop.”

But right now Berry­field Farm is all about pick­ing your own blue­ber­ries — at least until the end of the sea­son; and pick­ing your own is a great fam­ily out­ing. Blueray and Blue­crop vari­eties are ripe but thin­ning out, Cov­ille is peak­ing, and Elliott’s will round out the sea­son that ends in early August.

Hours change with the sea­son, but right now you can pick your own blue­ber­ries at Berry­field Farm Mon­day through Fri­day from 8 a.m. until 12 noon, on Sat­ur­day from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., and on Sun­day from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Hours are updated weekly at berryfieldfarm.com.

Evening pick­ing hours are by appoint­ment — call 740–625-7278 and leave a mes­sage, or email < info@berryfieldfarm.com >.

Berry­field Farm is located at 6424 Town­ship Road 199, Cen­ter­burg. To get to Berry­field Farm from Sun­bury travel north on Ohio 3, go through Cen­ter­burg and turn left on Ohio 314 (just after Memo­r­ial Park), and left on Town­ship Road 199. Berry­field Farm is on the left. You can’t miss it. The sign says Blueberries.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jul 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.