The 37th Annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival is Just a Week Away, and It’s Bringing Pies, Art, Music (and a Wedding!) to Down East Maine.
Nobody knows how to celebrate the wild blueberry harvest like the people of Down East Maine. Get ready to celebrate it with them! In Machias, residents like to say they “roll out the blue carpet” each August and this year is no different. The 37th Annual Machias Wild Blueberry Festival takes place August 17-19, so it’s time to make your vacation plans to head Down East. Here are some of this year’s highlights:
Blueberry Farm Tours – Learn how low bush wild blueberries are harvested, what it means to “rake” blueberries, and how a mechanical harvester works at a working farm. Weekend shuttle service is available from town.
The Blueberry Pie-Eating Contest – Contestants are chosen by lottery for this highlight of the festival that is fun to watch and to try. View these photos from previous years and judge for yourself.
The Blueberry Musical – A musical romp that features a different script every year and lots of local talent. This year’s theme, East Side Story, is certain to deliver with raucous music, choreography and wild antics.
7th Annual Blackfly Ball – This wacky dress-up dance party is as much crazy booty-shaking as it is celebration of a piece of community history. A much-anticipated family event.
Crafts & Artisans – Plenty of crafted wonders are on display this year including pottery, sea-glass, jewelry and smoked salmon.
ALSO: Cooking contests, a flea market, a road race, a parade, and on Sunday two Blueberry Festival Co-Chairs will wed on the steps of the Centre Street Congregational Church! What a way to celebrate!
If you want a taste of the wild blueberry harvest, do it in a town that holds the little blue fruit dear – after all, it put Down East Maine on the map! There is no admission fee, so come and enjoy and stay locally.
Have you entered to win a 5-Day Coastal Adventure? Bar Harbor is just a half an hour away from Machias, and this Sweeps is a chance for you and a friend to go wild in the land of wild blueberries with a 5-day expense-paid getaway at the Bar Harbor Inn. It’s filled with amenities, such as lobster dinner, spa, tours, and more. Enter for a Chance to Win!
Recently, the Huffington Post shared their “berry busting myths” in an effort to set straight those un-indoctrinated into the berry vocabulary.
One of these myths concerns size: big berries are juicier.
Of course, it’s part of the long-held fiction that bigger is better. And there’s really no better time to be reminded about the mystique of the small wild blueberry and its inscrutable attraction – especially for those who live in areas of the country where it’s just about to flourish.
The Huff debunks this erroneous line of thinking by explaining that jumbo berries are often not big on flavor. In fact, the article states, the congregation of taste – and of nutrients – is in the skin. So, the higher the skin-to-pulp ratio, the better the taste and the bigger the health benefits. It’s the case with many berries, but the difference is most startling when it comes to wild blueberries.
They summarize it this way: “Tiny wild blueberries, for example, are far more flavorful than larger ones and can be bought frozen year round.” Don’t we know it! In areas of Maine and Canada the size myth is just one more laughable oddity that those in the outside world may be slow to grasp.
The Wild Blueberry Book – Learning the Language of Blue
The myth of “bigger is juicier” is one that a true berry aficionado shouldn’t be buying into. But not everyone, especially those who don’t live where wild blueberries grow, understand the mystique of the local berries. Luckily, there’s help.
As Virginia M. Wright points out in The Wild Blueberry Book, those unfamiliar with the wild blueberry might think they are looking at “baby” berries. But those tiny fruits are not immature berries. Wild blueberries found only in Maine and Canada have many characteristic differences when compared to highbush, cultivated berries found in other parts of the country. Being compact is just one of them.
Wright, a Senior Editor at Down East Magazine, presents a comprehensive primer of blueberry knowledge in her book, and it is a real charm. It provides an insider look from farmers and growers to scientists and festival workers. The mock monthly planner from a Midcoast Maine blueberry farmer is an appealing addition; it invites us in on a process that includes “putting on bees” and using a blower oil burner to throw flames on the fields during their burn cycle. It’s a reminder that these harvesting chores that provide year-round consumption are truly the responsibility of individuals.
In the end, it’s all about eating these fab fruits, so Wright generously includes recipes from the best: a prize-winning blueberry salsa, Blueberry Spice Whoopie Pies, a first-place winner in the Machias Wild Blueberry Cooking Contest, and Baked Stuffed Lobster, a show-stealing prize-winner that uses blueberries and crab meat in the stuffing.
Taste of the Season
Another interesting part of the wild personality of the indigenous blueberry is the variations of taste. As Wright says, one may be sweet, the other tart, one citrusy, one grapey. Individually, they offer a remarkable array of distinctions, while together the effect is a fusion of tart and sweet, strong and subtle, that creates a complex taste experience.
As Wright explains, the variations are a result of the different varieties that grow side by side. “One acre of wild blueberries typically contains well over one hundred varieties of the berry, each one as genetically distinct from the other as a McIntosh apple is from a Delicious,” she states in the book. This genetic diversity is responsible for the berry’s mysterious one-of-a-kind flavor and provides the mystique that simply can’t be captured in other parts of the world.
Maine produces about a third of the commercial blueberry harvest, and Washington County yields 65% of Maine’s total crop. Mid-summer is a perfect time to be in the towns that make up Down East Maine because of the buzz of blueberry anticipation. In June and July, the barrens are done showing off their blazing red color, and the wash of blue has yet to appear. It’s an expectant time for harvesters, who are concerned mostly with fertilizing fields and making preparations by transporting equipment onto the land. Small farmers are at work there, and the large blueberry processors like Jasper Wyman & Sons are also an area presence.
Some farmers have rakers who travel to work the fields by hand, while larger commercial farmers opt for machine harvesting. (Find out more about the harvesting process.) Travel in this part of the state, and you’ll always find lodging areas serving blueberry juice as well as blueberry-themed meals, and local restaurants will be filled with residents associated with blueberries in some capacity, whether it’s as part of a family farm, as a tractor owner, or as a plant worker from one of the larger local companies.
Down East: Abuzz with Berries
Wild About Health‘s recent travels along the coast to Down East Maine was an extravaganza of blueberry value-adds and stretched-out barrens. It was all punctuated in hyperbolic fashion by Wild Blueberry Land, reinforcing the idea that Down East Maine is truly Wild Blueberry country. It’s no wonder Wright covers this landmark in her book, and lets us in on its quirky beginnings.
Built in 2000, Wild Blueberry Land began as Marie Emerson’s dream. Emerson is a chef and wife of farmer and blueberry expert Dell Emerson, and she wanted to replace a stream of changing businesses that occupied a section of Route 1 in Columbia Falls with giant blueberry. And that’s what she did.
Wild Blueberry Land in Columbia Falls, Maine as seen from Route 1
The blue geodesic dome makes any passerby want to pull over to gawk or nosh. It’s ultimately a bakery inside of a theme-park, complete with miniature golf course and an inside teeming with pies, cookies, and blueberry-themed tchotchkes and jewelry. It’s weird, it’s big and blue, and it’s there to fill any gaps in your wild blueberry education if you are in need. Consider it part of the culture of the tiny, uniquely delicious berry that is truly a Maine obsession!
Celebrate blueberries!
Plan your trip to wild blueberry country to see it all first hand. Part of the Machias Wild Blueberry Festival, which takes place this year on August 20 & 21, includes Blueberry Farm Tours. The festival draws thousands who come to experience the food, music, pie-eating contests, and unabashed fun.
This summer, we’ve discussed treading lightly around summer barbeques and cookouts and talked about ways to keep fruits and veggies in our line of sight when nutritionally gaunt foods flourish. But summer revelry is about celebrating food, not ignoring it.
Even though chocolate-covered bacon may be getting all the attention, attending an annual fair or festival can actually be one of the best things you can do to solidify your healthy eating commitments.
For all the glory, fun and nostalgia fairs provide, there is no denying that they can be nutritionally devastating. When we heard that the Orange Country fair featured Fried Butter – butter-injected dough that’s frozen, fried, and served with either whipped cream, parmesan cheese or marinara sauce – well, we could practically hear the crash cart being wheeled in. But fried dough and funnel cakes are fair and festival traditions, and if it’s not over the top, vendors are just not doing their job.
Before you cave in and order two fried Twinkies (420 calories per pop) consider the other edible wonders that summer fairs offer. Agricultural fairs, country fairs, and festivals that celebrate a regionally beloved fruit or veggie can offer a perfect opportunity to connect with real food. Perusing giant garlic heads, blue ribbon tomatoes, and twisty tubers can teach kids about where fruits and vegetables really come from. Beautiful garden specimens can provide the best lesson kids can have in understanding that food comes from the ground, not the can or the package. Fruit pies that ooze sweetness from their edges can be a reminder that baking from “scratch” hasn’t gone the way of the Victrola. And, witnessing a grower’s pride and joy in the form of a zucchini the size of a suitcase can be a lesson for grown-ups, too, and inspire us to make sure healthy, real food has a prominent place on the table long after the Ring Toss has been packed up for the season.
While corn dogs are a reliable fair indulgence (and not a bad choice, considering, at about 250 calories) it’s the wild, regional, unprocessed foods that towns around American take the most pride in. Crowning the Blueberry Princess just seems to have more resonance with the community than Queen of Cotton Candy. These examples of summer celebrations around the country are healthy cases in point:
Verrill Farm in Concord Massachusetts presents the Corn & Tomato Festival in August, with the chance to taste 30 farm varieties of tomatoes, as well as other farm fresh foods.
They say New Englanders lock their cars so someone won’t come along and fill them with zucchini. Your chances of being a victim of this heinous veggie crime is likely to skyrocket at the Zucchini Festival in Ludlow Vermont in August.
Virginia has its Cantaloupe Festival in July to showcase this luscious local fruit.
If seed spitting is your sport, the Mize Watermelon Festival in Missisippi will welcome you this July. The region is home to world famous Smith County watermelons – the ones you should be eating while the getting is good.
The Union Fair is dubbed a “Real Maine Agricultural Fair” and earns the characterization with oxen pulls, rooster crowing contests, and vegetable judging. It even includes its own Blueberry Festival where berry-busting desserts rival any funnel cake, hands down.
Early August is time to celebrate the raspberry harvest during Utah’s Raspberry Days. Permission to eat pie.
Not everyone is throwing ribs on the smoker in August. VeggieFest Chicago 2010, the largest free vegetarian food festival in the country, is on, with food demos and a food court that boggles the mind.
Late summer is the best time to get your veggies in cob-form. Nearly 50 tons of sweet corn will be consumed during the 63rd Annual Mendota Sweet Corn Festival this August in Illinois.
Sky high in natural antioxidants, the chokecherry has its day at Minnesota’s 3rd Annual Chokecherry Festival, including a pancake breakfast with chokecherry syrup. (Watch out for flying pits.)
Plus, Pier 21 will host Food for Health all summer through September at the Canada Agriculture Museum in Nova Scotia, which looks at concerns and questions many Canadians have about the role food plays in ensuring good health.
Finally, one of our favorites, the Machias Wild Blueberry Festival gives wild blueberries their day in the sun. They call the wild blueberry “the powerful little fruit that put our corner of Down East Maine on the map,” but the fact that it is a list topping food for disease prevention and antioxidant potency hardly seems to matter to those swarming downtown Machias. They are there to see the blueberry musical, participate in a pie eating contest, and take the blueberry farm tours.
Everything in town will be unapologetically blue, including the passenger railroad that rides sightseers throughout the festivities.
There are plenty of wild blueberry-themed festivals in Northern Maine and Canada that celebrate this indigenous fruit of honor that is harvested in late summer. If you live there or plan to visit, you can get a comprehensive list of 2010 Fairs & Festivals in the Maine area along with agricultural fairs that range from carny to classic and are always busting with fruits and veggies – real food with a little dirt on their natural packaging.
Seek out your own local fair that offers the best of good food. This summer, there is truly something for absolutely everyone.
