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Burke Hill Farm- Cherryfield, Maine
Ben Perrin
Ben Perrin first started picking blueberries in Washington County’s glacial barrens almost 30 years ago when everything was done by hand. During the 1990s blueberry farms rapidly consolidated under larger corporations and mechanical harvesters began to replace the over 12,000 pickers who once worked Maine’s blueberry fields. In order to keep tradition and jobs alive, Ben bought land in Cherryfield in 2002 and opened Burke Hill Farm, hiring all hand pickers. By specializing in fresh berries and growing them organically, as opposed to the frozen commercial berries, typically doused in chemicals and harvested and sorted by machine, Burke Hill is able to compete with the big guys. But that may change as the price of organic berries starts to drop. In addition to tough markets, climate change is causing unpredictability and swings in temperature and moisture that are hard on native perennials and berries in particular.
“There were lots of small growers, but it’s another story of consolidation. The big guys buy everything up and then control the entire market…there used to be thousands and thousands of people, now there’s hundreds and hundreds of tractors. I wanted to keep raking berries, so we started doing this” – Ben Perrin
“There is no way to produce a fresh wild blueberry without people. There’s no machine that can do it. It takes people to pick them and pack them.” – Ben Perrin
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