BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Appeal to Emotion, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 21.7% saturation with 102 hits. Analysis detected 817 faulty-reasoning hits from 471 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.7% and a BS Rank of 28% (18,860 of 25,951 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 72.70% of the article peer group.
WINDHAM – When Lori and Brett Jones bought property in Windham a decade ago, they thought maybe they’d buy a few cows or sheep to fill their four acres of lush rolling hills.
Then, as they cleared the land to build their home, they noticed there were wild blueberries everywhere.
The couple has been in the blueberry industry ever since, and closed out their second year participating in Maine’s Wild Blueberry Weekend on Sunday.
For the last six years, dozens of farms have hosted visitors for pick-your-own experiences, farm tours, demonstrations and a slew of other blueberry-centric activities.
“It’s a way to kind of get people out to visit the blueberry farms, and a lot of people don’t realize that some of these farms exist and they’re a place that you can actually go visit,” Lori Jones said.
At Tavern Hill Farm, the Joneses sell fresh and frozen blueberries, bright-purple lemonade and highly coveted blueberry pies made by Lori’s sister, who is pastry chef.
They do it all while eagerly sharing their passion and expertise with visitors.
For a Maine blueberry to be truly wild, Lori said, it has to be native to the soil rather than planted.
The perennial fruits lay dormant for most of the year to survive winters.
When it gets warm enough, they wake up and spread in vast clones underground.
Blueberry farmers act as stewards for the plant, clearing out competition and cultivating the land to help them prosper.
Anything that doesn’t roll, we think we don’t really want in our blueberries,” Lori said.
The machine was hard to come by, Brett said.
The Maine Blueberry Company innovated the machine specifically for Maine blueberries.
But they went out of production three years ago, sending the local blueberry industry into a bit of a scramble, Brett said.
There’s always an option to adapt high-bush processors from Canada to work for southern Maine’s low-bush berries, but sometimes they don’t work as efficiently.
Expensive equipment and decreasing land values have made it hard to find success in the industry, which Brett said is “hanging on by a thread” in southern Maine.
Celebrating Wild Blueberry Weekend has become an important part of helping it thrive.
The Joneses said they’ve received a ton of community support, with visitors coming from near and far to help celebrate the staple.
Evan Zink brought his family to Tavern Hill Farm this year to learn about wild blueberries as new Mainers.
He and his small children got a special opportunity to explore the field and pick the berries on Sunday.
“When (the children) got down there, and saw that they could eat the berries, they loved it,” Zink said after buying a five-pound box of frozen blueberries, a pint of fresh ones and a cup of lemonade.
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.