Last week has been a whirlwind here at Highland Blueberry Farm and Highland Organics! Who knew the Rhodes family would have such an amazing following and support base! Our farm is pretty quiet for the most part, with an occasional visitor to the farm store or visitor for a farm tour. Mostly I get to visit my customers at one of the 5 farmers' markets that I participate in. The Ladies of Highland Organics, Jody, Emily and Reshell help me in the shop. They make it possible for me to bring a 'Taste of Wild Maine' to many folks, and Reg, everyone needs a Reg in their lives! Tom and I have Reg, he works very hard in the fields, along with the pollinators, tending to the fruit so that we can have a bountiful crop to make more of our value added products. But then...... Justin Rhodes and Beautiful Family arrived Wednesday morning for a little farm visit, no big deal, we have visitors on occasion and we love showing others what we do. I decided to make a new recipe of Blueberry Muffins, which we serve to our visitors as a way of showing casing the organic wild Maine blueberries.
I spent 3 hours trying to make blueberry muffins the night before, when it was only suppose to be 15 minutes of prep time! 😲 Yeah.... it has been a long minute since my five kids were home and I was always in the kitchen cooking! Clearly, I forgot how and where things were in the kitchen! But wow! They came out sooooo good! (Recipe to follow for all you folks who wanted to know if we ship blueberry muffins, no we don't ☺ but I'll share the recipe so you can make them!) PS here is the link to Justin Rhodes, The Great American Farm Tour, YouTube channel just in case you didn't get to see it yet, "Bees Growing 30,000 Pounds of Blueberries". https://youtu.be/K-HPl5b2TTk
Anyways, back to the Rhodes family, my muffins were made, (a perfect way to impress little ones!), cold blueberry drinks and homemade lemonade was chilling (I can make that much quicker!), and shop was opened early for their 8 a.m. arrival. The local beekeeper was coming at 9 a.m. to bring bees to the farm to help pollinate my blueberry blossoms for sweet fruit in August.
They were prompt, Rebekah impressed me already with 4 kiddos and being early! Back in my day, with 5 kids, I was always running behind (must be #5, or me....) They bug sprayed-up and off we went to talk blueberries. Justin had his camera and might I add, he was quite skilled at using it with one hand and tripod too! Of course when I brought them to the Blueberry field, like most folks, they were looking up. My lowbush, wild Maine variety grows on the ground. Yup, that means back breaking work when racking them from the field but, the fruit is sooooo sweet and sooooo delicious! It is totally worth breaking one's back over 😏. Of course, the Maine state "fly" was present through our visit. Hello Maine Black Fly! And yes they bite, leaving an itchy mess, but fortunately the rule is, "In at Mother's Day, out by Father's Day!"
At 9am-ish Peter arrived while we were taking potty breaks (with littles, this is a necessity). When Justin walked into the house, he was wowed by what he was seeing and asked if I could tell him about our passive solar, envelope house with a Russian fireplace (more on this in another blog by husband, Tom), for another video he wanted to do. Funny how others see the 'wow' in what can become commonplace to us in everyday life.
Peter Cowan, The Bee Whisperer, http://www.beewhisperer.us/wordpress/ did a great job teaching us about honeybees and Justin was finally in a full bee suit this time for his close ups with the bees. Traveling on a bumpy road stirs the honeybees up and they are not so happy when they come out. Our goal is to build up our own hives so they live here permanently, but pollination waits for no one and so we do what we must until then. I love that bees, living on farms, was the norm for the farmer back in the day. Bees were not trucked in like they are today as most farmers were beekeepers and kept their own hives. So, Reg has taken on learning all he can about beekeeping and when I am able, we will be working together to build up our hives on the farm. So far we have 4 hives. The Rhodes' kids did a great job guessing what 3 things pollinators needed. Food, water and shelter. When bees have this, they are happy pollinators!
After having some food and drinks, another potty break and then some store shopping, it was time to say goodbye to the Rhodes family. We had hugs all around and off they went and we went back to our quiet life, reflecting and smiling over our sweet visitors. Then came Thursday afternoon..... and my phone started blowing up! I was off running errands and the Ladies were at the shop calling me to say that website orders were pouring in! As soon as I returned to the shop, we looked to see if Justin had posted the vlog, and sure enough he had!
I had no idea that this Beautiful little family was going to introduce our products to sooooo many folks following them!! We are beyond humbled and amazed. Grateful that all our hard work, from field to hand-filling tea bags, and making small batches of dehydrated blueberries would be so appreciated and desired by so many folks! We have had over 2000 people visit our website in the last couple of days, more than we have had in a year! So many orders have come in, many messages have been written, many phones calls made, and many have subscribed to our newsletter, while others have made future plans for a visit to our farm! One visitor is coming from Australia!
Tom and I love what we do. We love who we do this work for and who we get to work with. We are so grateful to all who are joining us in big and small ways, as we get to do this amazing work and THANK YOU Rhodes family, for your quiet little visit to our organic wild Maine Blueberry farm in Stockton Springs, Maine, one sunny Wednesday morning in May, 2017.
As promised, here is that amazing Blueberry Muffin recipe I promised you at the beginning of my story! Enjoy! Let me know how they turned out for you and how long it took you to prepare them 😋. Here is the link to the website where I found this recipe, I take no credit for this recipe at all. Thank you Little Sweet Baker.
Prep time: 15 minutes, unless you are Theresa Gaffney and haven't been in the kitchen for a minute!
INGREDIENTS 2 & ½ cups (310g) all-purpose flour 1 tbsp (13g) baking powder 1 tsp (5g) baking soda ½ tsp (2g) salt ½ cup (114g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 1 cup (200g) sugar **organic and brown, no white stuff if you can help it :) 2 large eggs **farm fresh of course. 1 cup (250ml) milk (any kind, whole or buttermilk is best) **Definately use buttermilk!! 1 tbsp (15ml) vanilla extract **nothing but the best for this one! 1 & ½ cups (230g) blueberries **I used 2 cups organic wild Maine blueberries and probably would have added 1/2 cup more, yum. For the streusel topping ¼ cup (50g) sugar ** organic and brown, no white stuff if you can help it :) 1 tbsp (8g) all-purpose flour 2 tsp (10ml) unsalted butter, melted ⅛ tsp ground cinnamon ** ceylon cinnamon sticks are easy to grind up and truly is the best cinnamon INSTRUCTIONS Preheat oven to 425F and spray or line a 12 cup muffin baking pan. Prepare the streusel topping by mixing all the ingredients together in a small bowl. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter with the sugar, add the eggs, mix, then add the milk and vanilla, mix again. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and gently combine using a rubber spatula until moistened. Fold in the blueberries until just incorporated. Divide the batter into the 12 muffin cups, top with streusel and bake for 5 minutes at 425F, then keeping the muffins in the oven, reduce the heat to 375F and bake for another 15 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. NOTES Muffins are best enjoyed the day of, but can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days. Recipe by Little Sweet Baker
Comments