JOYCE — Amid the green jungle, the blue globes fall, like rain, into harvesters’ hands.
Here at the Blueberry Haven farm, “it’s been a fantastic year,” said Meggan Uecker, one of nine gleaners who picked bucket after bucket of berries Tuesday afternoon.
From the Blueberry Haven’s 1,300 plants — growing here since the 1970s — Uecker and volunteers have picked some 300 pounds of fruit in recent days.
Uecker, waste reduction coordinator with Washington State University Extension’s Clallam County office, has delivered boxfuls of berries to the Port Angeles, Sequim and Forks food banks.
Blueberry Haven owners Debbie and Gary Heaton, now in their 16th season on the farm, are open to the public for U-pick. But with this year’s huge yield, they sought to share with the food banks.
Uecker put the word out for volunteer gleaners, adding that those who spent a few hours picking berries also could take a zip-close bag home for themselves.
Debbie invited Uecker and her volunteers out for another day of gleaning this Saturday. For information and to carpool to the farm, phone the WSU Extension office at 360-417-2279.
Karen Coles of Port Angeles and Ken and Mary Campbell of Sequim were among the volunteers harvesting more than 70 pounds Tuesday afternoon.
Under the bright sun, they gently pulled the blueberries into their pails. As farm work goes, this wasn’t so hard: The bushes are chest-high and fully loaded.
Debbie, a retired schoolteacher, and Gary, a retired facility administrator, came here from Oklahoma in 1999 with no previous farming experience.
Their son Daniel Heaton, now the technical and systems manager at the Jefferson County Library, helped them run the Blueberry Haven for a few years.
This harvest season started early, on July 20; Debbie expects it to wrap up by the end of this month.
For U-pick, “call before you come,” she said.
The Blueberry Haven, which has no website, is found about 17 miles west of Port Angeles at 173 Lewallen Road off Whiskey Creek Beach Road and can be reached at 360-928-0257.
As the volunteers worked into the evening Tuesday, the sun dipped behind the nearby trees, and birds called to one another.
But they don’t seem to take much fruit — yet.
“We have an agreement with the birds,” Debbie said: They wait until season’s end to come down into the thicket of bushes.
Then the birds can have all they want of the sun-ripened fruit lying on the ground.
