TAMING THE WILD BLUEBERRY 



147 



tion of one in his Winter Journal, under 

 date of December 24, 1859.* 



One interesting feature of blueberry 

 culture is the cheapness of the lands on 

 which they thrive best. Bog lands and 

 sandy lands well suited to the blueberry 

 can be bought in many parts of New 

 England for $1 to $5 an acre, and this 



* December 24, 1859. ... I measure the 

 blueberry bush 011 Fairhaveu Pond Island. 

 The five stems are united at the ground, so as 

 to make one round and solid trunk thirty-one 

 inches in circumference, but probably they have 

 grown together there, for they become separate 

 at about six inches above. They may have 

 sprung from different seeds of one berry. At 

 three feet from the ground they measure 

 eleven, eleven, eleven and one-half, eight, and 

 six and one-half or on an average nine and 

 one-half inches. I climbed up and found a 

 comfortable seat, with my feet four feet from 

 the ground. There was room for three or four 

 more there, but unfortunately this was not the 

 season for berries. There were several other 

 clumps of large ones in the neighborhood. 

 One clump close by the former contained 

 twenty-three stems within a diameter of three 

 feet, and their average diameter at three feet 

 from the ground was about two inches. These 

 had not been cut because they stood on this 

 small island which has little wood beside, and 

 therefore had grown thus large. . 



The stems rise up in a winding and zigzag 

 manner, one sometimes resting in the forks of 

 its neighbor. Judging from those whose rings 

 I have counted, the largest of those stems must 

 be about sixty years old.— Blake, H. G. O. 

 (editor). Winter: From the Journal of Henry 

 D. Thoreau, 16-17. 1888. 



because the very reason that makes them 

 good for blueberries — their acidity — has 

 made them almost worthless for ordi- 

 nary agricultural purposes. 



Some reader will ask, "Do you advise 

 me to go into blueberry culture?" My 

 reply is, the industry is so new and so 

 many unforeseen difficulties are bound to 

 arise that, until the details of successful 

 field management have been worked out, 

 blueberry-growing is not recommended 

 as an industry to any one who cannot 

 afford to lose both the time and the 

 money he may put into it. On the other 

 hand, if one does succeed in carrying the 

 thing through successfully, he may ex- 

 pect good returns from his venture, for 

 the Elkhart farmer, while apologizing 

 for his poor blueberry crop of 1910, 

 which was "almost a total failure" on 

 account of the late spring freezes, says 

 nevertheless that he got 65 16-quart 

 crates of berries, which he sold at an 

 average price of $2.75 a crate — an item 

 of $178.75 from an otherwise useless 

 5-acre bog. 



I remarked to a friend that blueberry 

 culture promised to be comparable in 

 many respects with cranberry culture. 

 He quite outran the idea that was in my 

 mind by replying, "Why, it has the cran- 

 berry beaten. You can't use cranberries 

 without buying a turkey to eat with 

 them." 



