Red, White and Blue Farms by: Kinley

On June 10th, our final day of this years ag tour, we visited Red, White and Blues Farms. This farm relies heavily on agritourism, which allows the farmers to teach the public about different parts of agriculture while also supporting their business. They have many activities for children, including slides, tractor rides, barrel trains and ball games along with much more. All of the activities are unlimited for only $10. They also occasionally have festivals which range from $5-$7 in price to enter! 

They have many flavors of blueberries available for picking including Sweet Crisp, Farthing, Spring High, Emerald, Jewel and Prima Donna. They are currently having a "U-Dig" where you can come dig up a blueberry plant for $5 a piece! Their facility includes a gemstone mine and blow up blobs to jump on. Red White and Blue Farms has 22 acres of sunflowers, 11 acres of strawberries, and 6-8 acres of peaches  to pick. They are even adding a corn maze this fall!

This is a mechanical blueberry harvester.

This farm also took us behind the scenes and showed us how they process their produce and flowers. They come from H&A Farms, where they managed about 9 blueberry farms and produce roughly 40% of the total blueberries. After picking, the berries are picked through for any bad or unripe blueberries. About 65-85% of the fruit is able to be processed and sent to our local grocery stores. These berries are mostly picked by variety and that’s why our store bought blueberries taste so different for every individual berry. What the farm doesn’t sell then becomes processed in order to prevent any kind of waste and use up the produce for any reason. Visiting this farm was very fun and I will absolutely be coming back here! 

  

We were able to taste the different varieties of berries and decide which we liked best.