Blueberry economics

This morning I finally finished bagging up the last of the frozen blueberries. As I was working on it, I realized I thought U-pick places such as the one J. went to with the masses was a good deal, but I had never actually done the math. And to clarify, they picked at a place where you just pick the fruit. There are no activities or petting zoo or concessions. The commercialized places are rarely a good deal, plus I find them tedious and annoying. But as usual, I digress. All this to say, I actually did the math when the blueberries were back in the freezer. 

The total amount of blueberries frozen was 44 cups. We baked with and ate at least six cups, plus J. and everyone baked and ate probably another six cups. I'm going with 56 cups of blueberries total, but that is probably a little low. I did some math and learned that we paid $1.25/cup of blueberries. So that seemed like a good deal, but I wanted to be sure, so I looked online at frozen blueberry prices. Our local chain grocery store has a sale going on for frozen blueberries: 40 ounces of blueberries is on sale for $12.99. After a little more googling, I learned that 40 ounces is approximately 5 cups of berries. At the U-pick price, 5 cups is $6.25. I can now definitely say that U-pick is the significant better deal and it makes that $70 we spent there feel a lot better. 

And a completely unrelated bonus picture. The evening was so cool and beautiful that J. and I went for a little walk after dinner. The sun was huge and orange as it set and I took a fairly decent picture. I know, wonders never cease, do they?