This is the Parlee Farms petting zoo in which it seemed like there were only goats. The hungry goats behaved like dogs, looking up and eagerly awaiting for food from the dispensary.
So, with a month before school rolls around again, it seems that my activities have become increasingly cheesy. This weekend, my family and the dog went to Parlee Farms in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, to pick exceptionally large and delicious blueberries.
Flower field
Surprisingly, the "low-hanging fruit" were not all taken, but there were enough pay-by-the-pound blueberries to go around for the crowds there. Several families filled their buckets to the brim.
Blueberry bushes
My bucket stock photo
There must be a special note for the unusually high number of Chinese families there, many equipped with sun hats. I have an honest theory.
Life may have began in the sea, but, for many Chinese, life began in the countryside. There is a Cantonese word (I don't know Mandarin unfortunately) for the romanticized, agrarian, and bucolic old ideal of living a simple life farming and tending animals. It is like "hillbilly country" that can be meant in either a positive or deprecating way, as in old-fashioned, run-down, or underdeveloped. Anyways, some people told me stories of getting education early on farms as part of the Cultural Revolution. In addition, China developed and modernized very rapidly, but heavy urbanization was not always the case several decades ago. The existing connection to agrarian ideals in a modern society is quite fascinating and made for a fun day.
To conclude, here is a picture of a big blueberry. After washing "the fruits of our labor," the berries were extremely fresh with all of them sweet, which is unusual especially compared to hit-or-miss supermarket blueberries that make one wonder about the long, mechanized supply chain to bring food from a farm to the table. Kudos to Parlee Farms!
Biggest blueberry I found
