Season Preview
Team Blue,
The moment is at hand. I have it on good authority that there is at least one blue berry in the patch. Not quite ripe - a little pink at the back yet - but a harbinger of the building blue wave nonetheless.
And I have been derelict in my duty to keep you abreast of the situation.
So out with it, then, technical farmer, ostensible marketer, the periwinkle Paul Revere:
The blueberries are coming - come and take a look!
The patch will be open all day Sunday. If you want to stop in and take a look, to confirm with your own two eyes that the berries that I claim to be coming are in fact in a becoming state of becoming.
It will be hot on Sunday, though a blessed respite from the rain - 7.14 inches in the past eleven days, and I foolishly left my irrigation running for another couple of inches in the misty midst. Ripening berries need water, of course, but memories of last year’s overabundant rainfall and the consequent rapid ripening in the patch (to say nothing of Duke’s insipid, watery taste) have me worried. I’ll let the grass grow long for a time to suck excess moisture out of the ground - though fear not, it will be pleasantly mown when picking season begins in, I would expect, a week.
So come on over, get out of town for a bit, escape Art Fair Weekend, maybe go for a dip in the Wisconsin River on your way to or fro. It’ll be hot after all.
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I’m also organizing a little work party from nine to noon Sunday. We are going to plant two short rows of blueberries, new varieties Sunrise and Blue Gold - the first expansion to the blueberries since the patch was established in 2017 and 2018. It will be rather momentous, in my opinion, and will form a part of the tale that I will tell of the blueberries and the farm for, ideally, the rest of my life. Make history with me.
If we have time, we’ll do a little weeding and make a rigorous estimation of the Yield Potential for 2025.
If you show up to help out, if you participate in the planting of so much as a single plant, the patch will reward you with one Pick Your Own Pound.
What is a Pick Your Own Pound, you ask? It’s a new form of paper currency issued by the blueberry patch itself, through its registered agent, Twin Crix LLC. Each Pound Note can be exchanged for one pound of Pick Your Own Blueberries at your later convenience - a Blue Standard, for the monetary history and conspiracy enthusiasts among us.
As that guy in the Popeye show might say, “I’ll gladly pay you blueberries for a little help today.”
I know that some of you have Pick Your Own Pounds sitting in your wallet from last year. The current note will be changed slightly in appearance, but your 2024-vintage Pick Your Own Pound Notes remain legal tender. A promise made is a promise kept. Don’t let it ever be said that the blueberry is anything less than a thoroughly scrupulous and honest plant - a berry of its word.
How does one use the Pick Your Own Pound, you ask? How does one operate this strangely-fangled technology? Simple: you pick a pound of blueberries and deposit the Pound Note, nestled conveniently in your wallet with your other money, into the cash deposit box at the pick your own blueberry checkout stand.
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And what the heck, let’s make some music while we’re at it.
I’ve got the barn all set up and plan to host Participatory Music Making Experiences all summer - see the event calendar here for more details. Let’s have a nice, low-stakes Season Preview of that as well, shall we?
Anyone who wants to participate in music making - or observe others participating in music making - is invited to join at the barn once it starts cooling off in the evening, say 7 o’clock. I’ll keep playing late if I get to. There will be a campfire, bring an instrument if you’d like, and there’s beverages in the barn fridge if you forget to bring something.
What is a Participatory Music Making Experience, you ask? Gosh, you’re full of good questions today. Simply but confusingly put, we’ll know it when we hear it! More detailedly, there’s something special about this barn that makes it awfully easy to feel comfortable making music, to tap on a conga, or play a simple line on the piano, or strum the two chords you know on guitar, or play a single note on the bass, or hum a melody. Repetition is key. Do something simple, do it again, do it over and over until all the rest of us have internalized it, incorporated it into our own ongoing reinterpretation of what is happening right now. Then modify or change it, add, subtract, multiply, or divide your brief musical notion as you see fit.
And then we continue going from there, making it all up as we go.
If that admittedly inadequate description stirs your curiosity, come on by to the Season Preview of the Ark on Sunday night.
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There’s so much more to day, but the hour is getting late, the rain has just now stopped, and I must turn my thoughts towards preparing for the weekend.
Pre Viewed,
Twin Crix
