It’s Berry Picking Season at Blackbird and Blueberries!

CLOQUET, Minn.–Summer is the time for fresh fruit and vegetables. And if you’re a blueberry fan, the time has come to go ahead and pick your own at Blackbird and Blueberries in Cloquet.
Saturday was the first day enough of the berries were ripe to have people get their fill.

“It’s an annual rite of passage for some. I have to come here and pick berries. Love picking them and filling up my ice cream pail and eating too many berries at least for the first few days and then freezing a bunch and making blueberry desserts,” said long-time blueberry picker Jeremy Uecker. “My wife loves to make Blueberry desserts, it’s fantastic.”

“I love fresh produce. I like to be outside and there’s nothing better than good fresh blueberry muffins,” said blueberry picker Mary Elliott-Klemm.

“They start when they’re young and we’ve got some that are in high school that were here when they were 8 or 9 years old and now they come out and they’ve been picking for several years. It’s become a tradition,” said the Owner of Blackbirds & Berries Tim Eaton.

“Seeing all the people, they’re so much fun energy here with all those people engaged in pretty much the most wholesome activity there is. It’s all the cute kids and ages from infants and people well into their 80s just picking berries and it’s such a great energy,” said Uecker. “We always strike up conversations with whoever we are picking next to, meet new people, and it’s just a great time.”

“We get hard-core pickers,” said Eaton. “They’ll come out and they’ll pick 50 to 100 pounds and then we get people who come out and they want to get a photo op with their kids and they’ll pick a pound and that’s really all they want to do.”

Blackbirds and blueberries season just opened July 30, owners say that this year’s blueberry season will last for about three weeks. If you want to pick your own, you should check their website or Facebook page in advance to make sure there are ripe berries to pick.