
DATE: Tuesday, July 29, 1997                TAG: 9707260077

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E3   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   93 lines

TAKE THE KIDS BERRY PICKING

WE WERE HUNGRY for berries. Blackberry cobbler, blueberry jam, berries on our cereal. So we went where we go every summer - to the berry farms.

This time we tried Pungo Blueberries ETC. because we'd heard they'd gotten a couple of emus. We'd also heard their potbellied pig had had a litter.

Here, piggie, piggie. We were on our way.

Robert and Juanita Burns opened their pick-your-own farm in Pungo 16 years ago. They started with berries and now they've got a little zoo going, too. Kids love it. Moms like the portable potty, the running water for handwashing, the ice water for drinking, all on the house.

We turned off Muddy Creek Road, drove down a dirt lane, parked, grabbed our buckets and high-tailed it to the fruit stand. Behind us, the kids had disappeared. Berries could wait. They had to see those emus.

Look at those big feet! Look at their little, tiny heads!

The long-necked emus looked back. Hungrily. Only on the farm a few weeks, they've already figured out that if they fix a big, glassy eye on little people, corn is sure to follow. Must be emu to kid telepathy.

Sure enough. Twenty seconds, no more, then, Mom, can we have some money?

Put a quarter in a little gumball machine and a handful of corn rolls out.

So, we fed the greedy emus, admired the eight cute little piglets, watched the goats sleep, the roosters strut and then - finally - wheedled the kids into picking berries.

Here, five varieties of blueberries ripen under 9 acres of bird netting and are pickable from about July Fourth until Labor Day. We came early in the season and picked a variety of berry that's slightly smaller but has a more intense blueberry flavor than some that come later.

We picked, the kids gobbled. The first few minutes that we stood between the rows all we heard was lips smacking, insects buzzing and the occasional shout from a successful fisherman at the property's catch-your-own pond.

Juanita Burns says she never minds if people eat as they work. We tell them to please taste as you pick and eat all you want because they're not sprayed during the season. Yes, we encourage taste-testing. After all, how many can you eat?

Plenty, Mrs. Burns. Plenty.

Having picked blueberries before, we knew the tickle method of picking that the Burnses teach newcomers, if they ask. To tickle, put your hand around a cluster and wiggle your fingers. The ripe ones fall into your hand. The red and green ones hang onto the bush. The kids picked them one by one. That works too, just more slowly.

It took us a while to fill our buckets, so long, in fact, that we decided to come back another day for blackberries. The farm's four thornless varieties ripen the last week of June and can be picked until mid-August.

Back at the fruit stand where our berries were weighed, we picked up a flier with this year's berry recipes. Juanita Burns prints up new ones each year, so many by now she says, that faithful customers should have whole booklets of them.

We also admired the farm's enormous toes of elephant garlic, jars of fruit jams and honey.

Of course we marched over to the emus one last time before we left.

``Mom,'' said Emma, staring hard at the birds, ``what if we had an emu?'' ILLUSTRATION: STEVE EARLEY

Grant Ehlers and his sister, Nichole, pick berries at Pungo

Blueberries ETC.

Graphic

IF YOU GO

What: Pungo Blueberries ETC.

Where: 3477 Muddy Creek Road, Virginia Beach

Hours: Monday through Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 1 p.m. to

5 p.m. Wheelchairs welcome.

Call: 468-5204, 721-7434 or, for the fish ponds, 426-FISH