This wing of the Corrado family had been going up to the Michigan fruit belt since 1974. We looked for a getaway that was within 150 miles of Chicago during the first energy crisis. We built a little cabin near the town of Grand Junction, MI right dab in the middle of America's largest blueberry growing area. Lots of low, sandy, acid soil makes this area perfect for growing the blues.

By way of background, we're not totally new to farming. Actually, Frank grew up in his family's garden and landscape business back in the 50s and 60s, so he understood what dirt and plants were about. Joe spent a summer in college working on a trail construction gang up in the Lewis and Clark Wilderness in Montana in the late 90s, so he had broken some ground as well. (That was also, the same summer he taught himself guitar.)

But to jump head first into running a farm was a little bit of a shocker. We spent some time after Joe bought the five acre blueberry patch last summer working with Bob Newnum, a well-known Bangor, MI farmer who was retiring and selling off his farmland. He told us a lot about what had to be done when – trimming in early spring, fertilizing, watching for fungus, getting bees on the blooms. We tested out the market a little, selling around 340 pounds of berries to our friends.

In March of this year, we hired some experienced trimmers to cut away some of the old wood. And then there was a farm store/barn to build, county paperwork to get taken care of, meetings with the U.S Dept of Ag and neighbors to chat up, equipment to buy and so on. And there was the weather this spring. You know – rain, and cold, rain and cold. More rain in this part of the Michigan fruit belt than almost any other.

Blueberries like their feet in water. In the old days, if a farmer had a patch of low ground, he would plant berries rather than try and put it into corn or beans. That's what happened a bit over 50 years ago when our two acre patch of 1400 high bush Jersey blueberries was planted. And this spring we could understand why they planted on this land: we could have run a canoe down between the rows in early May when we spread fertilizer.

The berries sit dab in the middle of a five acre parcel with a 34th avenue going by on the front and a large corn/bean field in the back. A young builder, Justin Allison, from Gobles built our barn. He also had the problem of working through the dicey spring weather. It's not a big barn, but a well-designed one, for both storage and eventual use as a store. It also serves as a processing facility for our fresh-picked berries to be cleaned and packed. We found some used equipment from a farmer with a much bigger operation and aft some "I love Lucy" moments , it was up and actually filling clamshells.