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at the edge of vast, flat stretches of 
blueberry patches known as the Bar- 
rens, have had little incentive to bother 
with shipping the lowbush berries 
fresh, for they have traditionally been 
able to sell almost the entire crop to 
large baking companies for use in muf- 
fins as well as muffin and pancake 
mixes. Even the mass market con- 
sumer prefers the little lowbush berry 
in his muffins. Unlike the bigger high- 
bush berries, which turn into large 
blue blots when baked, lowbush ber- 
ries don’t look messy after baking, and 
the manufacturer can put more of 
them in each muffin — an advertising 
plus. 
Recently, however, even the baking 
industry has been forced to look with 
increasing favor on the highbush 
berry. Lower production costs make 
the bigger berries roughly thirty cents 
a pound cheaper. Moreover, besides 
yielding berries that are easier to har- 
vest and 'clean, highbush blueberry 
bushes are far more efficient produc- 
ers than the wild Maine species. In 
Michigan, growers have been able to 
pick an average of two to three tons 
of berries per acre every year. In 
Maine, the average yield is only 800 
to 1,000 pounds per acre every other 
year, and most of those acres have 
to be as laboriously tended as if they 
were conventional cultivated fields. 
“I don’t know what they mean when 
they talk about Maine wild blueber- 
ries,” says Mary Ellen Bailey, an in- 
dependent blueberry producer based 
in Columbia Falls, Maine. “We fer- 
tilize. We mow out weeds. We run 
oil burners over the fields.” 
Indeed, the only thing “wild” about 
Maine blueberry production is that 
the plant propagates itself, spreading 
its rhizomes underground and produc- 
ing its own seed. Growers encourage 
the process with a battery of land- 
management techniques designed to 
reduce competition from other plants 
and from pests, as well as to improve 
the vigor of the blueberry plants them- 
selves. 
Native blueberry fields are really 
forests artificially held back at the 
low-shrub state of old-field succession 
by weed control. After the harvest, 
growers burn over their fields, a proc- 
ess that eliminates all surface growth 
but that leaves the blueberry rhizomes 
unharmed below ground. In effect, 
moreover, the burning prunes the blue- 
berries and spurs their growth. 
Meanwhile, birds spread new seed 
over the cleared fields, and established 
rhizomes take over more territory. By 
July, new growth begins to show above 
ground. Buds appear but do not blos- 
som in the first year. Because of this 
biennial cycle, growers rotate their 
harvests so that only half their fields 
are in the nonfruiting stage at one 
time. Yearling shrubs turn red in the 
fall. Then growers hope for a good 
snow cover, which will shelter the 
plants from freezing winter weather. 
Finally, in the spring of the second 
year, they have the pleasure of seeing 
their blueberries blossom. Each bud 
puts forth several white or pink-tinged 
blossoms in late May or early June. 
At this point, growers have to con- 
tend with various pests and diseases, 
the worst of which is the blueberry 
maggot. Its larvae attack the berries 
and feed on their flesh. To eradicate 
the larvae, many growers spray in- 
fested fields at the end of June. 
By the end of July, the lowbush 
blueberry crop has ripened. Day after 
day, local people — schoolteachers, 
students, whole families — collect in 
the fields early in the morning, stoop- 
ing over the bushes with the short- 
handled rakes that resemble cranberry 
scoops. Made from galvanized metal, 
118 
