Good for the Koivulas. We picked berries as an extended family in their pastures when we were kids. To bring home for making pies and cakes and freezing for later. The family were very smart about their berry business and tolerated no fooling around. They’d accept kids coming back from picking with blue teeth but were very strict about weighing up what you picked. Even in a little tin beach pail. Our mothers fortunately impressed upon us idiotic children to act with respect; the outing wasn’t supposed to be a field day. Somehow we managed to make it so. A rite of passage for Finn kids to understand from whence our food came. Our parents had been hungry during the Depression and our grandparents in Finland before emigrating. They knew how closely the proverbial wolf lurked near the door.
My father Toivo Kangas, related to me how he would pick blueberries on Kidder Mountain for the Koivula’s in the late 1920’s & early 1930’s and he was paid 5 cents a quart. I said to him, “Is that all?” He replied that, “There wasn’t much choice in those days.” So after paying the pickers there was still a little room for a retail mark up to 10 cents. The last commercial truck I saw collecting blueberries in New Ipswich from local blueberry fields was around 1971. Later on my parents “introduced” us to family blueberry picking on Kidder Mountain when I was 5 or 6 in the early 1960’s. By that time the Koivula’s were no longer commercially harvesting blueberries and instead they were charging a small fee for each quart of self picked blueberries. One would pay at a window on their house which they would open when you were ready to leave. I still remember the locations on the mountain where we could find the largest and sweetest berries.
I and my cousins picked blueberries for 10 cents/qt at my grandfather's farm. He, live the Koivulas, brought them to UCOOP in Fitchburg. The Koivulas should be in the Guiness Record Book.
Good for the Koivulas. We picked berries as an extended family in their pastures when we were kids. To bring home for making pies and cakes and freezing for later. The family were very smart about their berry business and tolerated no fooling around. They’d accept kids coming back from picking with blue teeth but were very strict about weighing up what you picked. Even in a little tin beach pail. Our mothers fortunately impressed upon us idiotic children to act with respect; the outing wasn’t supposed to be a field day. Somehow we managed to make it so. A rite of passage for Finn kids to understand from whence our food came. Our parents had been hungry during the Depression and our grandparents in Finland before emigrating. They knew how closely the proverbial wolf lurked near the door.
My father Toivo Kangas, related to me how he would pick blueberries on Kidder Mountain for the Koivula’s in the late 1920’s & early 1930’s and he was paid 5 cents a quart. I said to him, “Is that all?” He replied that, “There wasn’t much choice in those days.” So after paying the pickers there was still a little room for a retail mark up to 10 cents. The last commercial truck I saw collecting blueberries in New Ipswich from local blueberry fields was around 1971. Later on my parents “introduced” us to family blueberry picking on Kidder Mountain when I was 5 or 6 in the early 1960’s. By that time the Koivula’s were no longer commercially harvesting blueberries and instead they were charging a small fee for each quart of self picked blueberries. One would pay at a window on their house which they would open when you were ready to leave. I still remember the locations on the mountain where we could find the largest and sweetest berries.
I and my cousins picked blueberries for 10 cents/qt at my grandfather's farm. He, live the Koivulas, brought them to UCOOP in Fitchburg. The Koivulas should be in the Guiness Record Book.
Kidder Mountain still attracts locals and others to pick the blueberries that have been growing there for more than a century.