You don’t have to visit Plant City for more than five minutes to realize that the strawberry is king of area crops. But, it’s not the only sweet berry that grows here, and its round, blue rival certainly provides a tougher challenge.
Just ask a blueberry grower.
In short, it’s kind of a crapshoot: Blueberry season lasts from six to eight weeks, and it puts out just one crop a year. If you’re growing them, you have one chance to get it right during harvesting time.
Keel and Curley Winery has been growing blueberries as its primary crop since 1997 and, since going full-time in 2001, now has 30 acres of the fruit growing in its property.
“The lifespan of a blueberry bush is about 10 years,” says Keel and Curley Director of Farming Operations Ryan Keel. “We’ve kept about 30 acres of production on blueberries. We re-set two to three acres every year from older bushes.”
With such a short crop window, it’s imperative that anything that can go right does. After the end of season, the rest of the year is spent maintaining the bushes and doing anything possible to keep them out of harm’s way.
Keel and Curley workers pick, on average, about 10 to 12 times a year, going only for what’s blue on the bushes. Green berries are left there to ripen — hopefully to be ready for the next picking. This happens all the way up to the Tampa Bay Blueberry Festival.
“We probably average about $2 to $2.50 per pound in profit, Keel says. “Every year is different. Last year, we picked 150,000 pounds of berries off 30 acres. That’s probably an average year. The year before that was down, because of a lot of factors, but other years were higher than that. So, that’s a pretty good average.”
When the U-pickers come in, they pay $4 per pound. But, according to Keel, not all of these outside pickers are welcome.
“The question that people always ask me is, ‘What do you have to worry about?’ Our biggest issue, believe it or not, is the birds,” he says. “Everybody says, ‘Do they get insects? Do they get disease?’ They do, to some extent, but our biggest challenge is to fend off the birds. They’re hungry at the same time the people are hungry for blueberries, and this year is no exception.”
If you walk around the back of the winery on a normal day, you’ll see and hear this for yourself. It sounds like a lot of wings flapping, angry squawks and … explosions.
“We can’t harm the birds, because they’re migratory, but we can scare them,” Keel says. “We have a guy who works 12 hours a day, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., with fireworks and just keeps them flying around. Tries to keep them from landing in the bushes.”
As cool as a job that lets someone launch fireworks all day sounds, Keel says it’s still an aggravating experience for everyone involved.
“When they get hungry, they get relentless,” Keel says. “I’ve seen flocks of 500 to 1,000 birds come in. You shoot fireworks, and they fly away 50 feet and then come back. And then you do it again, and they fly 50 feet and come back. It’s quite frustrating, especially if you’re watching them eat your fruit.”