Weekend Blues @ Ever After Blueberry Farm

All photos by Kelsey Walters // Property of East Coast Current

To me, nothing announces the arrival of warm weather more than fresh fruit, and what better way to get that produce to your table than to pick it yourself?

Being well into spring with summer rapidly approaching, Floridians have been getting our share of warmth for a while now. Thanks to lots of sunny days, this season’s fresh blueberries are prime for picking and extra sweet and juicy!

While there are plenty of places all over the state to pick all kinds of fruit throughout the seasons, we have one close by in Mims that has a lot to offer. Not only are there tons of blueberries at Ever After Farms that are just begging to be plucked from the leaves, there are other fun activities for the whole family as well.

Ever After Blueberry Farm – Mims, Florida – Brevard County

Ever After is a quiet drive out to the sleepy farming town of Mims, about 45 minutes away in Brevard County. After entering the gates to the farm, a long dirt road leads you around the huge field of countless bushes, giving you the chance to stake out the perfect picking spot. You can grab as many bags as you’d like to fill with the ripe berries from the helpful staff under the shade of the huge barn they also host weddings in.

At just $7 per pound, you can fill your bags with as many berries as you’d like, which are helpfully marked with lines designating approximate pounds. A full bag is around four pounds of berries.

My husband, Scott, and I first visited Ever After when took our two-month-old daughter, Avery, for her first Florida or Bust outing on a perfectly breezy, overcast day back in April of 2018. Back then, a single blueberry was bigger than the palm of her tiny hand! To be fair though, these blueberries are exceptionally huge and like nothing you’ll find in the grocery store.

Since that first trip, we try to revisit the farm every spring – obviously for the delicious fruit, but also because it has become a beloved family tradition. Now, six years later, the families that own and operate Ever After invited us back to visit and get a sneak peek of their u-pick peach farm, which will open for the brief picking season in May. We spent the morning chatting in the fields, stuffing our faces and hunting for the perfect berry, and I must say, I couldn’t have picked kinder, sweeter people to spend the day with.

Scott is an avid home-grower, with an assortment of fruits and vegetables growing in our front yard in our sleepy neighborhood. We jokingly call it our Walters Family Front Yard Orchard, as we now have three Florida peach trees, blueberry bushes, grape vines and nectarines. He was eager to pick everyone’s brains on growing, pruning and fertilizing techniques. As it turns out, it’s scientifically proven that something happens in our brains to make fruit taste better if we pick it ourselves and eat right from the plant. So, there’s no doubt these will literally be the best berries you’ve ever tasted!

If you plan to go picking on a hot, sunny day, it is recommended that you lather up with sunscreen or keep the tiny ones at home between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. when the sun is beating down on the open fields. It doesn’t hurt to have the essential floppy hat either.

Upon our arrival, after meeting the Ever After family and the farm manager, Jenny Cahoon, her son, Cash, popped into the barn and whisked Avery away to the fields to pick with him. The two quickly filled their bags, while Cash, an expert picker and weed-eradicator, showed Avery the ropes and how to choose the best fruit. Jenny’s youngest, little Paisley, is the resident blueberry-taster and can routinely be found chowing down on fresh picked, juicy berries.

The rows are spaced apart enough to allow wheelchair and stroller access (score for parents of littles!) so no one is ever excluded from the picking. Even dogs are welcome! We spotted an especially cute pup happily scooping up the fallen berries from below the bushes. The plants are all natural and nothing is sprayed on the fruit like pesticides or chemicals, so you can feel safe eating straight from farm to table… or farm to mouth in the kids’ case!

In years past, most of the blueberries were too high on the plants for little hands to reach. Ever After wanted to make sure everyone had the chance to pick the perfect berry. “We worked with blueberry agricultural experts to find a way to maintain high yields while allowing kids to reach the best berries and we’re proud to announce that it worked,” explained Jenny. Now the biggest, juiciest berries are in reach of even the tiniest hands and every bush is the perfect height for anyone to pick on their own.

After picking, you can take a relaxing, tractor-pulled hayride around the farm.

The picking season opens April 20 and will continue this year (blueberries permitting) through May 5, so I highly recommend getting to the farm while the picking’s good! Stay up to date on Ever After’s Facebook page for any changes to times or dates, as some busy weekend’s result in the ripest fruit getting picked out early, or especially nice weather can create a surge or perfect fruit.

If you plan on making a day of your trip and having your selection in your car or out in the heat for a while, I suggest either bringing a cooler or another method of transporting your berries so they can breathe. After a couple hours in the plastic bags, our berries began to sweat. We took home a couple of bags after about an hour of picking, plus a tour of the gorgeous barn that serves as a picturesque wedding/event venue. We used our sweetest berries that night to make a favorite in our household –breakfast for dinner, and stuffed homemade waffles with ripe berries bursting with flavor. I had lofty plans of a variety of blueberry desserts, but they were so tasty that we ended up eating them all before I could make it to the store for ingredients.