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Wisconsin Couple Finds Fun and Satisfaction with U-Pick

By Donna Sanders Wisconsin Correspondent


Owning one of the largest u-pick blueberry patches between Michigan and Oregon does not mean that you are in the corporate farm status. By the end of this year, John and Terry Cuddy will have eight acres planted to these flavorful morsels.
As many as 10,000 people flock to their farm for their u-pick blueberries. And when they do, they find the Cuddys’ blueberries only faintly resemble the berries they find in their local grocer’s produce aisle. Instead of shriveled and small, their berries are large, plump and tasty. “If you want really good blueberries, this is where you come to get them,” says John Cuddy who runs the patch with his wife Terry. “I guarantee there will not be any moldy ones on the bottom of the box.” Perched on land overlooking the Rush River valley near Maiden Rock, Wisconsin, the Cuddys decided to start a blueberry operation when they returned from California in 1986. Cuddy wanted to live in the country and his wife wanted to start a business and they both enjoyed gardening. While in California they had enjoyed picking peaches and apricots right off the trees, so they decided to start a similar operation with blueberries. “It is a great place to grow blueberries,” says Cuddy. “We have probably the largest planting of high-bush blueberries between Michigan and Oregon. “We have four acres of the half-high and three acres of the high bush. If I were 150 miles farther south I would grow nothing but high bush. They are easier to pick.” And the Cuddys will plant another acre of berries by the end of this growing season. The variety they plan to plant will extend the traditional July picking season through August into the first of September. “The half-high produce a nice medium sized berry with real good flavor,” Cuddy explains. “They tend to be a little earlier than my high-bush varieties, but once my high-bush varieties come in it is tough to keep people in the half-high varieties.” When they started in 1986 the Cuddys read Extension publications, picked the brains of Extension agents and the people who had developed the half-high blueberry varieties at the University of Minnesota. Now anyone in Wisconsin who is interested in starting blueberries and goes to an Extension agent are given the Cuddys’ phone number. “The first thing I tell them is don’t quit their day job,” he says. “I don’t say don’t do it because it is a lot of fun and lot of satisfaction. However, if you need the money in the next 10 years do something else.” Once the blueberries are planted it takes up to five years to start producing and another eight to 10 years before the plants are mature. Plants cost anywhere from $2.80 to $5 per plant and it takes from 800 to 1,200 plants per acre. And in the Cuddys’ case there was soil preparation. They had to apply 2,500 pounds of granular sulfur per acre nine months before planting. In their area, that now runs 23 cents per pound. To maintain this they annually use an acidic nitrogen fertilizer and every three or four years add some extra sulfur in with that. “I’ve got plants that are 10 to 13 years old and it is my opinion that the half-high blueberries will essentially last forever,” Cuddy says. “The high-bush blueberries are supposed to last from 35 to 45 years. That is assuming you prune them and keep the soil acidic.” Besides the initial expense and the wait for production, anyone who operates a u-pick operation had better enjoy people. “People who pick berries are real nice,” Cuddy says. “The biggest problem that I have is that after six weeks I start getting tired of people. The days are long as we are open from eight to eight. You are being the nice berry guy 12 hours a day. If you can’t handle that you’d be crazy to do open a u-pick patch.” The Cuddys are always fine tuning their operation and trying new things. They did a research project for the Sustainable Ag Research and Education Network a few years ago. “We were looking at mulch to control weeds,” Cuddy says. As a result of the study, Cuddy purchased a Mill Creek row mulcher and started buying semi loads of sawdust. The first year he mulched all seven acres of blueberries. That year he put down four to five inches around each plant. A big change for the Cuddys was when they switched from hand pruning to mechanical pruning. “Now I mow them off to the ground,” Cuddy said. “It is the difference between two people bent over for three weeks and a lot of heating pads on the back versus three hours on the tractor and no burning. You do lose a year’s production but I think that evens out over the next four or five years.” To diversify some, the Cuddys also have an acre of currants. “That probably makes us the largest currant growers in Wisconsin,” Cuddy says. “That goes to show that not many people grow currants. And we also have about a half acre of raspberries.” Besides pruning and keeping the soil acidic the Cuddys have found the blueberries to be hardy. Their biggest problem is birds. “We are the biggest bird feeder in western Wisconsin,” Cuddy says with a chuckle. “We have cedar waxwings and robins here by the truckload starting two weeks before the blueberries are ripe and they eat 40 to 50% of our berries. Short of covering the entire patch with netting, all we can do them is terrorize them and attempt to give them heart failure. “The only thing that I have done that seems to work at all was totally inadvertent. I planted some mulberry trees 10 years ago. It turns out that the only thing those birds like better than unripe blueberries is ripe mulberries. So they stay in the mulberry trees for about 10 days until the blueberries get really ripe then they move into them.” To attract paying consumers, the Cuddys advertise in local papers, shoppers and tourist publications. This past summer for customer picked berries, the Cuddys charged $2.45 per pound and $4.50 a pound if the Cuddys picked them. While the Cuddys are making a modest additional income, they are still committed to blueberries. And all their customers get to enjoy their scenic view of the Rush River Valley for free.