Blueberries & Cranberries

Blueberries & Cranberries!     Now you too can enjoy Maine's bountiful harvest of wild blueberries and cranberries in a variety of our baking mixes!   Besides being delcious these tiny berries pack a powerhouse of nutrition and antioxidants.  Enjoy them everyday for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Wild blueberries. adapted to Maine's naturally acid, low fertility soils and challenging winters, are a low input crop requiring minimal management and cover 44,000+ acres mostly along the Downeast coast.  Native Americans first used the tiny blueberries, both fresh and dried, for their flavor, nutrition and healing qualities but it wasn't until the 1840's that wild blueberries were harvested commercially.  Today Maine is the largest producer of wild blueberries.

Cranberries grow naturally in bogs throughout Maine.   In the 1860s the first commercial cranberry bogs were established in Maine on 60 acres in Alfred, Maine with wild cranberry plants transplanted from throughout Maine. The fall harvested berries were shipped by sea to Boston in 100-pound wooden barrels and from there to Cuba.   Now most cranberry plants are hybridized and selectively planted to produce larger and sweeter berries.   Labor intensive, there are less than 250 acres of commericlal cranberry bogs in Maine today, mostly in Washington County, down from the more than 1,500 acres at the end of the 1900s.   Maine ranks sixth in the nation in cranberry production behind Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. 

 Also check out our dried blueberries or cranberries in 2-4oz packages.  Makes a healthy snack!