Diane Howard says blueberries are so plentiful, she's sore from pickin' them!
WETMORE -- Diane Howard and her husband Shawn are blueberry royalty in the Munising area. If you're ever at the Farmers Market on a Tuesday evening, stop by their stand and say hello.
Diane's developed a mean case of "Berry Back." It's a self-diagnosed condition you get from spending too much time crouched down, pickin' blueberries. Four days a week, several hours at a time, that's how you'll find her, and this season, the pickings are good.
"It's wonderful. It's a phenomenal year. The berries are just loaded. Actually, you can literally sit down in a patch and just pick for quite awhile before moving around...if you find the right spot," explains Howard.
Blueberry lovers in the Munising area know that if you head south on H-13 in Wetmore, you're in blueberry heaven. But everyone's got their own special spot, and Diane's secret is safe with me.
While we were out picking this morning, we ran into Reino Kinnunen. He's 83 years young, and he was out picking for his older friends.
"I got to pick a lot of them for a lot of my friends that are too old to pick them themselves," says Kinnunen, "and they just love them."
The giant mosquito bite on my hand is proof that Wednesday morning's conditions weren't perfect. (Ideally, you want a nice breeze to shoo away the insects.) But the sun was bright, and the berries were plentiful. Diane expects them to stay that way through the first frost of the year. Enjoy pickin', everybody!