Is There An Active Protector — Guardian Angel Who’s Watching Over Our Rare Blueberries ? Or Is She Fast Asleep ?
My Own Emotional Knee-jerk Reaction To The Situation Surprised Me
It’s not like they were all my own personal blueberries. But one would think so with the immediate knee-jerk emotional reaction I had to the letter to the editor.
The letter was in reference to a health supplement company wanting to harvest blueberries in Alaska — My Home, for their flagship product. Of course they had to get the blueberries from somewhere.
My own deep personal interest was a surprise to me. I didn’t like what I was reading. Locals who knew more than I did had written many letters to the editor already. I searched for, retrieved and read every one.
Each letter outlined the hazards of harvesting large amounts of blueberries. The concern was the ruining of vast numbers of bushes due to ignorance of safe picking practices and mishandling.
The more I read the more upset I became. To be honest, I was quite naïve about the nitty-gritty, farming aspect of blueberries. I did my own basic gardening, but I wasn’t a farmer with large-scale crop knowledge.
What I did know — was that I picked blueberries along with many of my Alaskan neighbors around the state every year.
Our Alaskan bears look forward to the blueberries being there as well.
Their plan to harvest 150,000 pounds of blueberries initially and then increase it to over a million pounds within the next year didn’t sit right with me at all.
That’s a lot of berries!
Not to mention we’d had an increasing number of bear maulings in recent years. It sure didn’t make sense to further irritate them by interferring with a food that is vital to their survival.
