Blue season

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 10th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Blueberries. 

They are one of Americans’ top ten most-preferred fruit. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we Americans consume about a pound and half of blueberries per person each year. Which seems way too low … impossible to believe, but it's true, we checked it out.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Yeah, and I'm a blueberry outlier, at least that's what I'm told. If it’s a day ending with “Y” it’s yogurt & blueberries for breakfast. 

But here’s some alarming news. Some of those who grow blueberries are having a tough year. 

Here’s WORLD Senior Writer Kim Henderson.

KIM HENDERSON: Jason Dripps owns First Fruits Farm in Summit, Mississippi.

JASON DRIPPS: You see that stamen inside there, or pistil, I'm not sure which one it is. But that's the little baby berry form right there inside that little cup . . .

He mainly grows blueberries and blackberries. In March, Jason took a homeschool group through his rows of blueberry bushes.

JASON: You really don't know, but in a couple weeks, we'll see the actual berries setting and forming on there.

CHILD: Are the birds a problem to your berries?

JASON: Oh, well, I have so many berries it doesn't matter. I'm willing to share.

Jason has berries to spare because he has so many bushes. 14,000 bushes to be exact. In a good year, they produce 150,000 pounds of blueberries. And although he’s willing to share, Jason is a little concerned about the season ahead.

JASON: You know, Monday night it got down to 26 here, and I probably lost half of my crop just because of that one night. But you see all the little brown flowers, they killed them, and as we walk through there, you'll see the little cups there falling off.

Jason and his wife, Alma, run the 76-acre farm. Blueberry bushes take up 16 of those acres. First Fruits Farm is a beautiful place with wide open fields and wildflowers. But it’s also a business.

JASON: All right, we'll walk up to the harvester, and I'll show you all how it works.

The harvester is an impressive machine. It’s huge, and it combines mechanical shaking with a type of conveyor collection. The goal is to gather berries with minimal damage.

SOUND: [MACHINE CRANKING]

Jason uses it in the commercial side of their operation. They also open the farm to customers who pick for themselves.

RHONDA LOVE: There's a batch of blueberries, and you just take your hand and pull them off . . .

And 10 weeks later, that’s what Rhonda Love is doing—taking advantage of the U-Pick opportunity. It’s June now, and thunder is rumbling in the distance as she works to fill her pail. 

The berries are midnight blue, the size of a marble. Sweet and juicy.

LOVE: Usually they're in, see, like this, the groups. Some end up on the ground. [Thunder.] Girl, me and you may go together out here . . .

But picking is limited. That cold spurt turned 2026 into a bad year for First Fruits Farm.

ALMA DRIPPS: There's nothing you can do. It's at the mercy of the Lord and the weather, so that's what happened.

Alma Dripps remembers their high hopes.

ALMA: We got on the golf cart that Sunday after church, rode through the field, took picture...more blooms than we had had in many years.

Then it froze that night.

JASON: It's about as bad as it can get, as far as the blueberry crop. We're not picking anything commercially.

ALMA: We have over a hundred rows, and there's about six rows. That's really what people are picking on . . .

So the harvester won’t be running. It’s about a $50,000 loss.

Other blueberry farmers in the region are hurting, too. It’s been a wet spring. Even birds can be a threat.

JASON: One farmer I know, he told me that he estimated he lost around 100,000 pounds due to migratory birds. They came in and just were decimating his crop.

Blueberries are a volatile business, and foreign competition has made it more difficult.

JASON: When we first bought the farm in 2015, we were pretty much able to go all frozen berries, which meant it was a lot easier to pick.

But demand changed, and growers realized frozen berries aren’t consumers’ top pick.

JASON: Chile, Peru, Brazil, Mexico started producing fresh berries in our off season.

The family used to belong to a growers cooperative, 200 members strong. Then it got down to six farmers. Now, it’s disbanded.

ALMA: Only way you can really make any money is to sell fresh, and it's a lot easier to sell for frozen because they're not as sensitive. But when you sell for fresh, the berry has to be—what did you say, have a life of?

JASON: The grocery stores like a four- to five-week shelf life on the berries.

So now they sell fresh berries, but not this year. Well, not commercially.

It’s a good thing for the Dripps, farming is a side business. They’re not subsidized by the government and they don’t have crop insurance.

But they’re ok with the loss. And all the work that went into it. Even the constant mowing.

JASON: It gives me time to put my earbuds in and I'll listen to John MacArthur sermons for four or five hours at a time.

Like many family farms, the Dripps have dabbled in agritourism. The farm has hosted a wedding and had a pumpkin patch. An old pump house-turned-airbnb on the property brings in guests from all over the globe.

ALMA: We've had people from Spain, South Africa, France, Scotland, England, and then all over the U.S. They love the idea of staying on the farm. We use that as an opportunity to share the gospel, if we meet the people. I have a lot of Bible versey things in there . . .

So they take the bad blueberry years in stride.

JASON: The farmer's motto, I tell everybody, is "next year." We always look forward to next year.

For customers like Rhonda Love, this year’s berries, the ones that survived the freeze, are perfect.

LOVE: I may make a blueberry cobbler this evening. That sounds good.

ALMA: Alright, so right now we're bagging up her treasure. She did all the work.

LOVE: Thank you so much. I had a good time.

And like most of the farm’s blueberry customers, Rhonda plans to come back next year.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kim Henderson in Summit, Mississippi.

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