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Blueberry Farm Update

The blueberries are ripening! We've been picking handfuls of them every day for the past week, and yesterday we picked a small bowl full.  This year our harvest is going to be on the small side since our plants are still young. In a few years, we'll hopefully have a big enough harvest to share some and eventually begin a u-pick farm.

Blueberry farm update

The deer have been very interested in the blueberry plants, but fortunately we put netting up that keeps the deer and birds out. 

Bowl of blueberries

We purchased our netting from American Nettings & Fabric Inc. located in Ferndale, Washington.  They provide giant rolls of netting for commercial farms.  The netting we selected is a durable white hexagon mesh that is for multi-row purposes and has a 10-year life expectancy.  The size we chose is 17 feet wide by 328 feet long, allowing us to cover 5 rows of blueberries.  We used t-posts to hold up the netting.  On top of each t-post, we zip-tied pieces of foam to make sure that the top of the post didn't break through the netting.

Blueberry farm with bird netting

To keep the netting from blowing away, we secured the base of it.  In some areas we secured the base of it (on both sides) with extra PVC pipe that we had stashed in the garage.  We also used some metal and electrical pipe that we found laying around in the old milk shed.  The pipe worked great as it could be zip-tied to the bottom of the netting.  When we ran out of pipe, we used giant rocks that we found here and there on the property. And then when we'd used up all the rocks, we used scrap wood from an old fence that we'd taken down.  

We've had a lot of wind that has pulled the netting loose in a few spots and I've gone in and reinforced the base of the netting with bigger rocks and more wood, until finally it no longer comes loose.  It's not the most ideal or beautiful way to secure bird netting, but it works, and the investment is much lower this way especially since we will not see a profit from the blueberries for a while.

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