Tuesday, May 23, 2023

BLUEBERRIES WASPS AND PAIN OH MY

So this happened:

Look at these plump, wonderful blueberries!  Yay!  Let me go get a bowl and pick some as a surprise to bring back into town.  I pulled some from the bottom and then I decided to reach in from the top and get some...

Did I look before I leaped?  Nope.  If I had, I would have seen the above.

But no, I stuck my hand into the netting and...

Boom!

Got stung.  Twice on my hand.

The stings were immediate and then the itching.

Then the swelling.  Here was my hand yesterday at work.  No knuckles.  You can see in the first picture that I DO normally have knuckles, ha.

Read that swelling can last for 3 to 7 days, especially when it is on an extremity like hands or feet (now THAT would hurt, yikes!).


But I was able to snag these beauties and it made the pain worth it.  They are huge and plump and, as 2nd Man said, better than we get in the store.  I guess just like tomatoes fresh from the garden, blueberries are just as awesome.  I was honestly surprised how big they got and how truly 'blue' they really are.

We had another handful in the fridge from the last time we gathered some out there (a bit smaller).  Luckily, we have just as many left that are ripe and more unripe and the second bush of that variety has just as many coming on.  We love that we're starting to get some production from these bushes.


11 comments:

  1. Oh no! Yellow jacket stings hurt sooo bad! And your poor hand is so swollen. Maybe Benadryl tablets and Benadryl cream could help.
    But you sure picked some beautiful home-grown blueberries!

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    1. They do don't they? Ugh. Hand is better today, itching is gone just a little puffy. I can't imagine it being on a foot, I don't think you could get a shoe on. The blueberries were so good it made up for it, ha. We can't wait to have lots of them every season. with four bushes fingers crossed.

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  2. They make fake wasp nests to hang or I've even used the brown paper bag method and it really does keep them away. I hung one in our shed that they were constantly building nests in and nothing last year at all. I hung one by the garden and one on our patio and we saw very few wasps last year. We used to get a lot.

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    1. Oh wow, I'll have to look that up, thank you for that. They are bad on our porch at times. They just start building anywhere. One time I saw one up in a tree and I could only imagine if I had bumped that with the mower, yikes.

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  3. OUCH! That had to hurt. From the looks of your swollen hand; the wasp got the best of you there.
    Keep ice packs in your freezer there at the farm to put on to keep the swelling down, but first; wash the area with soap and water and then lay your ice pack down, wrapped in a thin cloth and apply it on the sting; 10 minutes on and 10 minutes off for a total of 60 min.
    I have gone barefoot before and stepped on a honey bee and I made and used a seasoning salt paste and put on or you could also use a slice of bacon, but me waste a good slice of bacon................Never.

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  4. I swell worse than that. But, it looks painful. I always had to fight wasps to get scuppernong. I don't look forward to my blueberries having wasps.

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  5. You need to go there in the late evening when they are all in the nest, make a small paper torch and burn the nest than cut that branch off.

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  6. Wasp stings are the worst! What a rude reward for your troubles.

    I'm amazed you have blueberries already! They're gorgeous.

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  7. Do yourself a favor and bring a jug of white vinegar with you next time you visit the farm. Next time you get stung, soak the site in a bowl of vinegar. It counter acts the sting and the venom. I learned that by chance when I got stung last year while washing our Adirondack chairs. I got popped 3 times and the sting brought back memories of the jellyfish sting I got while down on the coast last year and remembered how well the vinegar worked. Great stuff.

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  8. Don't let me near wasps. After being stung in two years doctor declared I was allergic. Blueberries are always a delight.

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  9. Bennie-dryl baby. Always keep a tube of the ointment on hand and you can get rid of most of that. And, if you did not know, unlike bees which can only sting once, wasp can sting over and over again.

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