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Blueberryland: Taming the Maine Wild Lowbush Blueberry

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As someone who has periodically travelled through downeast Maine, passing through miles of seemingly tractless spruce forests and barrens, I have wondered who lives there, and why. This book captures the answer to that question in a way which edifies the reader about the history and quaint charm of the region. Moreover, the book also suggests how people in similar circumstances find livelihoods, community, and even survival in the most unexpected places. A wonderfully educational and insightful read that makes the reader long to visit the region...those who do will find an austere beauty, hardy people, and newfound respect for the spirit of human enterprise... and they are likely to return to the area, as did the author.

This book is a personal history of lowbush blueberry farming in Washington County, Maine. The author, Walter Staples, was a frequent visitor to the region as a young child, when he accompanied his father on hunting, fishing, and blueberrying trips. He later purchased some land in Wesley, Maine to use as a base camp for hunting and fishing. When he made this purchase, much of the acreage was being used for commercial blueberry harvesting, and he deeded the rights to the commercial harvest to the previous owner, Shirley Guptill, for as long as Guptill was able to rake the berries. When Guptill became too old to rake blueberries, Staples began learning the trade himself.

In this book, Staples relates a number of hunting and berry picking stories, as well as some of his adventures and misadventures as a commercial blueberry harvester. He provides some interesting anecdotes about the local history of Wesley and the development of the commercial blueberry industry in Maine. The book also includes some statistics and press releases from industry publications, some poems on blueberrying and some old family recipes.

What is most attention-grabbing is Staples' personal account of the transformation of blueberrying from family enterprises to agri-industry. At the beginning of his tenure in the fields (1980), berries were raked by hand and fields were maintained with the addition of hay and regular burning. Expenses were minimal, and profits from a few works' work were significant ($3582.79). But by the 1990s, production protocols had come to require application of herbicides, fertilizers and mechanical raking. All of these additional inputs came at significant expense, while the resulting glut in the blueberry market meant that the returns did not keep pace with expenses. By 1990, Staples was losing money through maintaining and harvesting his fields, rather than gaining a respectable bonus to his yearly income. By then, the only way to make money in blueberries was to lease the fields at a minimal price to commercial growers, or consider organic alternatives. What becomes clear is that the term "wild blueberry" when referring to the Maine agri-industry product is no more accurate than the term "red delicious" apple. In this case, "wild" is simply used as a synonym for low-bush, to make the product sound natural, which it clearly is not, from Staples' description.

Staples includes a number of interesting anecdotes of blueberry country in the book, and some fascinating details about the development of the blueberry industry, but the presentation of the stories, poems, can be a bit disjointed at times. However, interested readers can piece together a remarkable personal story of a family industry being subsumed by big business. Others may simply enjoy the tales of rural Maine and the delicious blueberry recipes.