
The Lost Art of Growing Blueberries with Fire - RyanShook
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/why-do-people-burn-blueberry-fields
======
leafmeal
Indians in California (and it sounds like many other places in the US too)
burned annually for a plethora of reasons. I'm learning about this in
[https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-
wild](https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520280434/tending-the-wild) which
explains how native Californians actively maintained the landscape.

From what I remember from reading, burning

\- increased growth of grasses in spring to feed native grazers

\- encouraged fresh shoots from plants to grow long and straight which made
them useful for basket material and arrows

\- kept meadows open and barren of trees which encouraged grazing and made
hunting easier

\- captured and cooked insects such as grasshoppers for food

As California has suffered so much recently from wild fires, we're learning
how seasonal burning was also import for preventing catastrophic fires.

Places like Yosemite were described by early white settlers as resembling a
park, with large, spaced trees and grass beneath. You could see from one end
of the valley floor to the other. With modern fire suppression, this is
impossible, and many of the once vast meadows are now filling with encroaching
pines.

This barely scratches the surface of how fire was used to manage land
resources by California Indians. I highly recommend this book if you're
interested in Native American practices, California history, land management,
and native plants.

~~~
beamatronic
I guess you can have fire-managed, healthy forests OR permanent human dwelling
structures but not both at the same time.

~~~
gen220
You can have both. See the useful links at the bottom of this page [0], here
[1], and here [2]. It requires ingenuity and discipline to maintain a S.A.F.E.
zone, but it’s not impossible.

I remember reading but can not find a link about how people experimented with
different landscape strategies (I think in Canada?) to see which techniques
worked best. The best strategies were able to withstand the worst varieties of
fires.

In short, “we” know what works, but applying the knowledge is expensive and
works only for individuals. It’s hard for the government to compel people
living in wood cabins to get a metal roof and to clear a hundred foot
perimeter of forest.

[0]: [https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-
re...](https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/fire-
resistant-landscaping/)

[1]:
[https://www.thisoldhouse.com/platform/amp/landscaping/210155...](https://www.thisoldhouse.com/platform/amp/landscaping/21015539/firesafe-
landscaping-defensible-space)

[2]:
[https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2016/rmrs_2016_smith_...](https://www.fs.fed.us/rm/pubs_journals/2016/rmrs_2016_smith_a001.pdf)

------
hirundo
On a hike we found dozens of ripe blueberry bushes at the trailhead and along
a fire road to the trail propper, so were expecting lots more for the rest of
the hike. But the berries stopped when the trail started. Turns out they love
the roadside disturbed ground but don't do so well among established plants.

That's admirably anti-fragile, but comes with the downside of being fragile to
peaceful domesticity. But it makes for a good pioneer or colonist.

------
andai
“I do a lot of things by choice that people don’t do anymore, and I’m only
finding more and more reasons to keep doing them.”

------
kitotik
“I do it for the human culture as well as for the agriculture”

A beautiful sentiment that the world would be much better off if more food
producers shared.

------
dhbradshaw
We had raspberries planted in a good spot of ground and they completely failed
and we sent back to the nursery letting them know and they sent us new starts.

Before we put in the replacement raspberry starts, we had a bonfire. The new
ones took on the charred land and proceeded to take over the place and produce
a nice harvest for several years.

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jonstewart
The previous owner of my house planted a few blueberry bushes (not the lowbush
wild ones of Maine that should be burned/pruned after every year of fruiting).
I’ve always thought of blueberries as inferior to strawberries and
raspberries, but now I wonder why so few people have blueberry bushes! Picked
ripe and eaten fresh, they’re delicious. A little care when planting, mulch
and peat moss in the spring, regular watering, and you’ve got blueberries to
enjoy every morning for a couple weeks in summer.

~~~
Wistar
And, as an added bonus, once they get established and mature for a few years,
three or five bushes produce an incredible amount of blueberries. At least
here in Western WA state.

Carefully frozen, there's many a blueberry pie, scone and pancake all winter
long.

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peteretep
I live in a country where a major source of pollution is farmers burning shit,
so I’m having trouble getting with fetishising this as some kind of pastoral
bliss.

~~~
audiometry
Yeah. Every year or two we get deluged by “haze” fro Indonesian farmers mass-
burning their fields in preparation for planting palm oil trees. It sucks.
Days or weeks of foul air, stink, and blight. Can’t imagine Californians
tolerating that.

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stirner
I grew up nearby in Washington, Maine, and we burned our fields using this
method. It was always fun seeing the firemen in their hazmat-like suits; very
Cormac McCarthy-esque.

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zwieback
Interesting - I live in Oregon where we grow tons of blueberries but not the
wild kind. I always wondered how they are different, apparently mostly grow in
the Northeast US and Canada.

~~~
Scoundreller
I dream of wild blueberries and refer to the cultivated kind (even the
“cultivated wild” kind available frozen) as 3D printed blue spheres.

They don’t travel well, so you’re unlikely to find them fresh outside of
Ontario, Quebec. You need Boreal forest for good ones imo.

I don’t understand why they’re hard to find in Toronto when you can find a
roadside stand a few hours north that has them, often trucked from more hours
north.

Lots grow well around Sudbury because the nickel smelting plant’s acid rain
made it even better for acid-soil-loving blueberries.

Similar with Lac St Jean region in Quebec that had a massive fire.

~~~
cgh
> They don’t travel well, so you’re unlikely to find them fresh outside of
> Ontario, Quebec.

They grow in massive quantities in BC. They are a major food source for black
bears and their frequently-encountered shit is packed with seeds from the
berries.

~~~
steve_adams_86
I find them a lot here when I go to mountain biking resorts with my family. I
don’t do the biking, so I take my toddler hiking instead. Mount Washington on
Vancouver Island is a great spot for berries. Even the trails heading up the
hill directly from the resort are absolutely loaded with blueberries and black
huckleberries. Whistler has heaps of good berry trails too.

I think it’s because so much of the earth has been dug up and disturbed for
the resorts and trails, and the plants are such effective pioneer species.

------
jamesmontalvo3
I grew up in Maine. The blueberry field a half mile down the road from my
house was burned periodically—probably yearly but I was young so I don’t
remember.

~~~
jamesmontalvo3
I posted that then read more comments. This post is Mainer-heavy. Nice!

------
gnat
tl;dr: Native Americans would burn the Maine grassland to stimulate blueberry
production. Most of the plant is below the surface as rhizomes, and cutting or
burning the above-ground part of the plant will stimulate the plant and boost
harvests. Burning is preferable to cutting because it also kills funguses and
insects.

The article follows one grower. For more info I found the UMaine extension
program document useful:
[https://extension.umaine.edu/blueberries/factsheets/producti...](https://extension.umaine.edu/blueberries/factsheets/production/pruning-
lowbush-blueberry-fields/)

~~~
DiabloD3
I live in Maine and grew up here.

Field across the road used to be a blueberry field, and one of Wyman's huge
freezer facilities is a few miles down the road, along a now discontinued rail
line.

Now its a high school. Ahh, goodbye nice friendly traffic pattern, I miss you.

That said, I don't think they've actually stopped burning blueberry fields,
every so often I hear someone talk about it. It doesn't seem to be a _lost_
art, just a lesser practiced ones. The kind of wild blueberries we have up
here (not those fat ugly tasteless ones other states grow) seem to require it
from time to time.

~~~
sharksauce
> Field across the road used to be a blueberry field, and one of Wyman's huge
> freezer facilities is a few miles down the road, along a now discontinued
> rail line.

> Now its a high school. Ahh, goodbye nice friendly traffic pattern, I miss
> you.

I think I know exactly the town you're talking about.

During my time Downeast I was told I should cut down the wild berry bushes we
had growing all around our driveway every autumn. Hell with that, said I. Next
year, with no berries, I figured they might have a point.

------
flr03
Coming from a family of farmers from both my father and my mother sides I
remember my father mentioning this technique to me as I was a kid and we were
seeing a "wild" fire in the distance (Beauce/Sologne region in France).

He would say farmers would do it and pretend it was accidental, out of any
legal context. I don't know if the practice is fully forbidden or just very
restricted. But it's probably well known.

------
tpmx
Are these the small, tasty blueberries, or the giant not-so-tasty (but
instagram friendly) blueberries (referred to as "american blueberries" in
Europe)?

~~~
ip26
The large ones can be delicious, but you have to buy them at the right time &
from the right place.

Not unlike oranges. They are available almost year round but they are
exceptionally delicious for only a few weeks.

~~~
tpmx
Ah.. interesting!

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kchoudhu
So when the global south burns fields to grow crops, it's slash and burn, but
when they do it in the US it's a lost art.

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kubapawlowicz
Isn't this a way too invasive way to increase crops? Think how many plants,
insects, and small animals suffer from this practice. In any way doing sth
traditional is not an excuse for a disregard to natural environment.

------
jessmartin
"But he didn’t set out to become a _torchbearer_ for a historic agricultural
practice; in fact, he never intended to become a blueberry farmer in the first
place."

Good one.

------
dondoron
I assume this is the same as using Terra preta, which can be produced in a
sustainable way and stores carbon dioxide.

------
cbsmith
Slash and burn agriculture. Wait, weren't there problems with this?

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Havoc
Ironic given how much flak farmers in 3rd get for any kind of fire use

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aliswe
Don't forget flame rye, or "flammenroggen".

------
kleton
Is this carbon-friendly, or is there a more modern way to accomplish the same
goals?

~~~
cortesoft
I would imagine it is fairly carbon neutral... you are burning things that
grew over the last year. You aren't releasing new carbon into the air.

~~~
ry_co
This isn't quite right. Technically it's carbon neutral, but the alternative
method is carbon negative, as a larger portion of decaying matter will
sequester carbon into the soil than would if you didn't burn. So the reality
is that this is not carbon neutral compared to the alternative.

Of course, there could be some hidden factor I'm missing, as biological
systems are complex.

~~~
ip26
biochar is actually considered a carbon sink, because the carbon is not
readily released, unlike organic carbon.

