A Bumper Blueberry Crop Brings in the Bears!

It's been a perfect year for wild and cultivated blueberries and it looks like we're going to harvest and store enough to eat berries almost every day for the next year. In this video, I'm sitting in an Ontario Parks field that was burned last year, which restarted the successional growth pattern by setting back the forest species and encouraging pioneer and somewhat shade intolerant species like blueberries. Bears have gathered here from miles around to pack on the pounds in preparation for winter hibernation. From now until November, bears will feed up to 20 hours per day and eat as much as 30,000 calories in a day!
We don't harvest storage berries from here but rather from other crown land spots and on our family's three homesteads where we grow lowbush and highbush blueberries along with countless other fruits and vegetables.
Welcome to our self reliant homestead! Join us, Shawn and Dervla, as we create a resilient, abundant and sustainable ecosystem that feeds our families from the land in Ontario Canada. Using permaculture as our guide, we strive to become independent in water, food, energy and shelter, focused on beauty in form and efficiency in function.
Our Self Reliance is a life of compromise between my two daughters and my wife's preference for culture, comfort and formality, and I, with my love of chaotic and beautiful but challenging and often uncomfortable wilderness living. The resulting homesteads are an eclectic blend of modern with traditional, whimsical with practical, formal with informal, civilized with rustic.
Over the last five years, my wife and I designed and built our dream homesteads from scratch with very little outside help; from undeveloped, declining forest to a comfortable home and cabin with a prolific edible landscape for people and wildlife equally. For many years, we have strived to lessen our burden on others by taking full responsibility for the health and welfare of our immediate family while building a strong community around us, both online and offline. Now that the infrastructure is in place here, we will be spending more time working cooperatively with community members, including extended family, to collectively become more resilient while living a deeply satisfying and meaningful life. Thank you for being part of that!

#homestead #sustainability #farming #offgrid #selfreliance

[scottwhite]

WOW !!!they are loaded u need a blueberry rake I'm from Maine and I think the wild ones are so much better.

[Esoj.]

The shots of the single crow perched on the dead tree look so cool!

[kimlyle]

Organic blueberries - that is so freaking nice!!!! You are a very lucky man.

[Gardendreamsforme]

Every year after the wheat harvest and then baking the straw we’d burn whole fields in AZ in order to replenish the soil. It was a sight to see and my father took plenty of 8mm home movies of it.

[JimmyDCarter]

Wild blueberries make great pies. I love them. Great video!

[LiveAlohaOhana]

🐻 Totally a bears paradise Shawn ' They can probably smell those berries from miles around! Great place to film them 👍 Thanks for sharing! Funny i just got a craving for some blueberry pie or preserves, my favorite 😂

[shellypontz]

My grandma used to take us wild blueberry picking as young children. She was Canadian. We would visit in the summer. She would strap little metal Sheds peanut butter pails around our waste with grandpas belts. We thought it was great fun, never realizing how much work it was, until we were much older!😂

[lindapetersen]

SHAWN & OUR CALI !!! I never knew this about blueberries !!! Am so glad your teaching us about this plants and how the forest fires help out all out here !!! Didn't know that we all had different types of blueberries really !!!

[chongseitmooi]

This is a blue berries wonderland ❤ good fortune fr who has opportunity to access them

[Wxcvbnmlk]

Merci Shawn intéressant de connaître la coupe productive pas connue en France 😊

[leapingkitties]

When I was much younger, out camping in Sask, I discovered a field of wild blueberries, it was magic being a kid from the city.

[canadiancabin]

Lots of Bears around me, too, Shawn here in the wild blueberry capital...Oxford Nova Scotia

[williamleopold]

Beautiful blueberries ! Enjoy but watch your back for teddy bears !

[jeanettec]

Five bears! At their restaurant! Be very careful! Its beautiful there

[michaelmalik]

That is one fantastic patch of blueberries!

[sanibel]

Beautiful blueberries! Lovely field. Like what they did to the land there, good conservation no? Thank you Mr. James. ❣️🍀

[jilbertb]

You should see if you can get Thimbleberries to grow there.
We have them in da UP, eh. They taste like raspberries and cream.
Big bushy plants that like partial shade.

[sandratweedale]

Thx Shawn. Reminded me of my youth. Up at our cottage near Eganville Ontario there were wild blueberries in the hills (rock croppings) across the highway. We got the sweetest juiciest berries every summer. So much fun with cousins and friends. Then right into the lake when we got too hot

[frankcarpenter]

"This is the lifestyle that i would chose if it's possible for my next.

*I LOVE THE WAY YOU CHOSE TO LIVE YOUR LIFE.👍👍👍👍!!!!

*FROM DAY ONE!!!.

[susanhamilton]

Holy Mackrel! What a crop! Amazing to see.