Ever After U-Pick Farms

Blueberry & Peach Farms in Mims, Florida

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 and peaches are prime for picking and extra sweet and juicy!

Where to Pick Fruit in Florida this Spring

While there are plenty of places all over the state to pick all kinds of fruit throughout the seasons, we have one close by that has a lot to offer. Not only is there tons of fruit 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. Both in Mims, just a couple miles apart, Ever After U-Pick Blueberries and U-Pick Peaches are a central Florida staple and now is the time to get picking!

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 blueberry 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.

Pick your own Blueberries in Mims, Florida at Ever After U-Pick Farms

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 we 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 (pictured below). 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, Phil and his family that own and operate Ever After invited us back to visit and get a sneak peek of their u-pick peach farm, which is now open for the brief picking season in May. We spent the morning chatting in the fields, stuffing our faces and hunting for the perfect early peach, and I must say, I couldn’t have picked kinder, sweeter people to spend the day with.

Pick your own Peaches in Mims, Florida at Ever After U-Pick Farms

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 this will literally be the best produce you’ve ever tasted!

Upon our arrival, after meeting Phil and the farm manager, Jenny, 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.

Phil and Jenny were both raised in generations old farming families and are true experts. The vision for Ever After began when Phil was out for a drive with his family looking for properties for a wedding venue and his daughter spied a blueberry field. Today, they own a total of nine Ever After agricultural properties, all serving as stunning wedding/event venues, including citrus, flower fields, a vineyard and even a ranch, throughout Florida.

The rows on both farms 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!

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. Over on the peach farm, the trees are a bit higher, but are pruned for the best growth and biggest fruit into a vase-like shape, so they’re easy to reach as well.

Blueberry and Peach Picking Season in Florida

The blueberry picking season opened April 20 and will continue this year (blueberries permitting) through the first couple weeks of May, 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 weekends result in the ripest fruit getting picked out early, or especially nice weather can create a surge of perfect fruit.

With a short season, peach picking is at the whim of the weather and Mother Nature, and may be limited to appointment-only slots, so be sure to call or check online ahead of time! This week (May 6 – 12, 2024) they will be open on WEDNESDAY, May 8 from 12 – 5 PM. If you can’t make it out for picking season, the peach farm also hosts a family-friendly fall festival every weekend in October with pumpkin chunkin’, hay rides, crop maze and tons more fun.

For most, Georgia comes to mind when you hear of peaches, however Florida peaches are especially unique. Considered a melting peach, rather than the typical cling peach, the exceptionally soft fruit doesn’t travel well on bumpy trucks and won’t last in supermarkets. But they truly shine in taste, as each bite will quite literally melt in your mouth.

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 fruit 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 barns that serve as picturesque venues. 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 peach and blueberry desserts, but they were so tasty that we ended up eating them all before I could make it to the store for ingredients.

Looks like it’s time to go back and pick a few more pounds… see you there!