Today was a big day for the Mattamuskeet Momma venture. We were visited by Sherry Batot, a Food Regulatory Specialist with the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Ms. Batot performed a thorough Home Processor Inspection, which consisted of checking my kitchen and pantry for many things, including cleanliness, dedicated business spaces for processing equipment and finished products, water supply, proper refrigeration, adequate and safe lighting, and proper facilities in the adjacent bathrooms. She also approved my product labels, and was a great source of information, help, and advice. The boys and I had spent the last two days organizing, re-organizing, and cleaning the kitchen. Not that the kitchen wasn't clean, mind you, but we wanted to make sure it was extra sparkling clean for the inspector's visit! I have never seen the boys so dedicated to helping me clean something. When Ms. Batot took a look at my Lazy Susan Tupperware cabinet, Greyson proudly exclaimed that he had organized it all by himself, which is no mean feat, as this is the cabinet that Eli hits on a daily basis. In about one minute, Eli can turn a perfectly organized cabinet into a landslide of plastic containers, strewing lids hither and yon from one end of the house to the other. After so many episodes of this, I must admit that I had taken to tossing the containers back into the cabinet in undignified heaps and shoving it closed with my foot. Greyson definitely earned his chocolate ice cream reward this afternoon!
What all of this means is that Mattamuskeet Momma is a North Carolina approved home processor for breads, preserves, jams and jellies, and that we can now sell our products. The boys were so excited, they wanted to jump in the car and go to the Farmer's Market right now! I had to tell them that the Belhaven market wasn't open today, and more importantly, we didn't have any preserves to sell yet! So Cole declared that tomorrow morning first thing we would venture into town and get our supplies, go back home, and get busy making jam. What kind of mother would I be to not agree with such enthusiasm from a six year entrepreneur? Speaking of enterprises, the boys' pumpkin patch is coming along beautifully, the plants already almost to Cole's waist. The sturdy vines are already sending out runners and are studded with male blossoms that have yet to open. A few female blossoms are starting to emerge, their bases already swollen with the promise of new pumpkins. A recent severe thunderstorm took its toll on two of our young plants, snapping them off cleanly at the base, while the rest remained, luckily, unscathed.
Our first order of business tomorrow upon returning home will be to transform some beautiful Hyde County blueberries into blueberry jam. Stumbling across Carawan's Blueberries in Swan Quarter was an unexpected delight. All last year, off and on, I had asked anyone and everyone if they could tell me where the nearest place to pick blueberries were. I got a few recommendations to try Grassy Ridge, the predominantly Mennonite area of Hyde County that I visited for some amazing strawberries about two years ago. I loaded up the boys in the van and we ventured out that way, hoping to come across a sign along our journey. As we passed peaceful farms and neat homesteads, along with the Rose Acre Egg Farm, we were hopeful that we would spot a homemade sign offering you-pick blueberries. Unfortunately neither the boys, with their faces smashed intently against the windows, nor I happened upon a blueberry farm, so I continued on to Plymouth to pick up some things at the local Piggly Wiggly. As we pulled out of the parking lot on our way home, I happened to see a little sign at the stoplight declaring "Carawan's Blueberries - We Pick, U Pick" with a phone number. I pulled into the nearest parking lot and dialed the number, only to find out that Carawan's was about fifteen minutes from my house on the other side of the lake. Only in my world do you have to drive an hour in the opposite direction to find out that what you were looking for was right down the street from home!
We crossed the Lake Road and went east along 264 until we passed Mattamuskeet Seafood. That's when we spotted the small, hand-lettered sign proclaiming simply "Blueberries" and pointing towards a dirt path skirting a corn field. We drove down the path and entered a clearing that the boys breathlessly declared as "heaven." Row after row of head and shoulder high blueberry bushes loaded with their deep indigo bounty greeted us. A small farm shed sported an old-fashioned basket scale, with the instructions to weigh our berries and place our money in the tin. We wasted no time, an armed with old plastic ice cream buckets, we commenced to picking.
This was my first time picking blueberries at a farm. I was used to picking my own berries at home from my knee-high spindly plants, and was usually ecstatic when I came away with a handful (which was then promptly eaten by one of the boys before I could make it into the house). We arrived at the field at 7;15, and I told the boys that the goal was to pick 10 pounds before the sun went down. We picked and picked some more, the boys surreptitiously shoving berries into their mouths whenever they thought I wasn't looking, though their moans of delight gave them away every time. Eli had no such qualms about hiding his berry eating from me, and promptly discarded the bucket in favor of the two-handed pick and shove-into-his-mouth method.
After the sun went down, we began to get nervous about achieving our 10 pound goal before dark. The boys asked if we were going to stay out here picking blueberries all night, and I urged them into double-time. Finally, we thought we might have enough and made our way to the scale. Our three buckets, and my estimation of what was residing in Eli's belly, came up to ten pounds, and we put our twenty dollars into the tin and headed for home. Cole asked "how come we didn't know about that place before," and I told him all that mattered was that we did now! I know that it sounds silly to say that our evening picking blueberries was one of the best ones that we have had since moving to Hyde County, but it's true. We laughed, made up blueberry picking songs, and had a contest to see who could pick the most. The boys couldn't stop talking - no one fought, no one cried, and Eli was content to roam, pick, and eat, settling down in the soft grass between bushes to rest in between blueberry binges. The boys said it must be Heaven the minute they stepped out of the van, and in a way, I think maybe they were right. 
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