In this video, I took my kids (and a couple of their friends) out to a local blueberry farm and turned it into a homeschool field trip, and honestly, this is the kind of learning that I really appreciate.
We walked the rows, buckets in hand, picking berries straight off the bush. No worksheets, no lectures, just hands on the plants, and berries in our mouths.
Gardens of all sorts are a great classroom where you can combine nutritional learning with soil science and weather education.
In the instance of blueberries, you can teach your children that they grow best in acidic soil, which is why you see them thriving in places like the Southeast and parts of the Northeast and Pacific Northwest. Here in Texas, they can grow well too, but only if the soil is right and the plants are cared for properly. That alone opens up a conversation about soil health, climate, and how different regions support different crops.
We talked about seasonality while we picked. Blueberries are a late spring to early summer fruit, usually ready between May and July depending on where you live. The kids learned quickly how to tell when they are ripe. If the berry is deep blue and comes off easily, it is ready. If you have to pull, it is not. Simple, but powerful. That is observation, patience, and feedback in real time – a type of education you cannot learn SOLELY from a text book.
One of the most important facets of my homeschool philosophy is the teach the children how to grow food, to be connected to the land and the source of our sustenance. Not in theory, but in practice. The kids feel the sun, they see the plant, they taste the difference between a store bought (even organic) and a fresh picked. Nothing beats a fist full of ripe, sun warmed berries on a late spring day.
And you get to bring your bounty home!!! At home you create an extension of the lesson learned in the orchard – you can watch videos, read books, and explore recipes about the food you just harvested (in our instance, it was delicious blueberries!)
Our favorite ways to eat fresh blueberries are as follows:
1. fresh snacks right out of the bowl
2. adding them to yogurt or oatmeal with some crunchy granola
3. baking muffins
4. making a simple jam
5. freezing some for later (my son makes smoothies ALL THE TIME)
If you really plan your agricultural homeschool field trip right, you should be able to come home and incorporate lots of academic learning into a micro unit study!!!!!! This kind of field trip checks a lot of boxes without trying too hard. Science, geography, food systems, even a little bit of economics if you talk about local farms and small growers. But more than anything, it builds a relationship with food and with the land (and cultivates a beautiful memory for your children).
If you are homeschooling, or even if you are not, this is worth doing. It is simple, it is tangible, and it gives your kids something real to connect to. I haven’t been back to a blueberry orchard since this trip – I am very excited to see if I can find any you-pick farms in our current area for this spring. I cannot believe its been seven years – I am so SO GRATEFUL that I made these videos that documented my early homeschool and homesteading journey!!!!!!!