Birds work hard. Can you imagine building your own house?

Plus there’s all that singing and flitting around gracefully. So I don’t begrudge them some berries. But there’s only one of me and there are an awful lot of them. In an effort to assuage them and still get to eat some blueberries, we planted seventeen bushes. We have six varieties – Bluecrop, Bluegold, Darrow, Legacy, Polaris, and Rubel – to allow for cross-pollination and give us a longer harvest season.

Lots of people recommend freezing blueberries in a single layer before putting them in containers, but I’ve never had a problem with blueberries sticking together. Strawberries, yes, will freeze in massive clumps impossible to pry apart, but not blueberries. So I skip that step, which gives me more time to keep up with the birds.