Wild Blueberry season peaks in northern Ontario despite heat wave

Wild blueberry season is in full swing in the Sudbury area, with pickers braving the heat and vendors lining Highway 69.

Blueberry season is in full swing in the Sudbury, Ont., area. Despite the heat, pickers are out in the bush and vendors are along roadsides.

Antoni Sliwa and his wife Joanna woke up at 4 a.m. Wednesday and made the four-hour drive north from Brampton to Sudbury to buy wild blueberries. They have a long list of recipes and this trip they bought 18 litres of berries.

“My wife she makes perogies, and too we make some jam and I mix them with the yogurt,” said Antoni Sliwa, a Brampton resident.

Sliwa has been buying from ‘the Blueberry Guy’ for more than 20 years and makes several trips each summer.

“Usually, I buy 100 litres in a season even around 150 litres. So, the taste and I know they are very healthy. Antioxidants for my health with my age I ate them. So, I recommend to everyone to eat them. But it’s also fun to pick on your own it’s not like the farmed blueberries,” said Sliwa.

Art Choquette has been selling blueberries for over fifty years, that’s why he’s known as ‘the Blueberry Guy.’

“We had a weird spring. Very, very cold it delayed the berries I figure two to two and half weeks. But according to some of my pickers we may have blueberries into October,” said Choquette.

Choquette told CTV News that it looks like a strong blueberry crop this year but says it’s not as bountiful as years dating back before regreening in Sudbury.

“It was fine to regreen but they could have left the blueberries in certain areas alone by liming all the hills they have reduced the quantity and the places to pick so we re not getting the same amount of berries that we had in the 70s and 80s,” he said.

Sliva said he will be back soon to get more berries and will bring his friend some of his homemade blueberry liqueur.