Tarts, sweet and juicy blueberries are ready for picking at The Rocky Point Blueberry Farm. The farm that held a soft opening for the Warwick Neck neighborhood last week has become a community staple since original owners Mark and Betty Garrison started it in the mid-1980s.

The farm’s owner, Nancy Cornish, is excited to start another season of blueberry picking. “It’s peaceful, and it’s a good place for healing your soul,” Nancy said. She recommends using the blueberries to make pancakes or pie, like her family did when she was a child and picked berries at this farm with her mother.

“My dad made it to 107 and my mom made it to 102,” said Nancy. “And we fed them blueberries, and I grew them all organic vegetables. Stay away from chemicals, that’s how to stay healthy.”

Nancy and her son, Stephen, purchased the farm from Rhonda Shumaker and her husband, Joe Gouveia, in 2020. The 8.5-acre property on Warwick Neck includes a 2.5-acre netted blueberry patch that houses over 2,400 individual blueberry bushes. The farm was busy that summer because it provided an outdoor and socially distanced activity during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also as a result of the pandemic, Nancy was able to recruit the help of local college and high school students whose spring semesters had been canceled.

Nancy still recruits the help of local youth, like her neighbor Theo Brennan, because it takes months to prepare the blueberry patch for the season. In February, Nancy ordered 24,000 bumble bees, which were delivered by mail,  this year to pollinate the farm, an increase from the 16,000 last year. “Looking at these bushes, there’s more berries than leaves. They’re loaded with berries. So I think the bees did their job pretty well,” Nancy said.

Each year in March and April, the Cornish family team begins their preparations by trimming one-third to one-half of the bushes out, to renew the bushes to grow more. Mulch is delivered by R. Patenaude Landscape on Warwick Neck Ave. and then spread under each bush, which takes around a month. The netting canopy must be stretched above the entire patch, and clipped onto large poles, which also takes around a month. In May, the bees are released to pollinate simply by opening the doors of their boxes, which are sealed with thin paper that the bees eat through to get out. In the early summer, the family team creates aisles for people to walk down by further trimming the bushes or tying them with twine.

“We won’t use Roundup or anything like that to kill the weeds, we don’t want any chemicals like that on this farm,” said Nancy. “You have to mow up and down the aisles and weed. We spread fertilizer by hand under each individual bush.”

The lack of chemicals on the farm may be a contributing factor to the plentiful bounty of blueberries. Last season, in summer of 2023, about 7.5 tons of blueberries were harvested.

The blueberry patch is open now through mid-August: Sunday-Thursday from 7 a.m. until noon and Thursday evenings from 4 to 8 p.m. The farm is closed Friday for ripening, but opens again on Saturday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“The original owner, Mark Garrison, came to visit us last summer,” said Nancy. “He was thrilled to see that we loved [the farm] so much, and he was thrilled to see that it looked so good, and we were taking good care of it.”

“Everyone seems to like coming here,” Nancy said about the relationship between the community and the farm. “They like that we’re friendly and welcoming to everyone. We’re kind and we’re fair.”

The farm offers “Pick Your Own Blueberries” for $3.95 per pound. The price is reduced the more one picks the course of the season. With the Frequent Picker Plan, the price is reduced after 10 lbs. and again after 50 lbs. For those who are unable to pick their own, or simply prefer not to, blueberries cost $5.95 per pound or $4.50 per pint.

The farm provides blue buckets lined with plastic bags, and there are even kid-sized buckets for little ones who want the independence of carrying their own. The farm stand sells other products such as local honey, maple syrup from Coventry, painted pottery items from New Hampshire, and candy. After the blueberry season is over, be sure to come back for the pawpaw crop, a tropical-like fruit native to the Midwest and parts of the South, available from mid-September to the end of October. More information can be found online at www.rockypointblueberries.com.