<p>Cranguyma Farms' blueberry orchard – with leaves slowly turning red – can be seen through the holly grove at twilight.</p>

Theres nothing not to love about U-Pick farms.

I remember several pleasant late summers when my sisters and I?would visit berry farms in Marion County. Wed spend a few hours filling buckets with fresh, succulent blackberries, boysenberries and marionberries, sampling a few choice specimens along the way, before racing home to find the best recipe to fit our harvest. Picking ripe fruit in the sunshine, the pride that comes from gathering it yourself, the cheaper cost as I said, theres nothing not to love.

When I moved to the North Coast I searched for U-Pick places, but for some reason I couldnt find any. Im not going to lie: I was a bit disconcerted. I comforted myself by foraging for wild blackberries, but it wasnt quite the same.

Then, two weeks ago, I learned about the blueberry and cranberry farms on the Long Beach Peninsula. How had I not heard about them before? It was a chance to pick berries and support local farmers I was in. I planned a trip up to the peninsula to visit Cranguyma Farms with a van-load of enthusiastic friends, and we headed there late one afternoon.

The drive up was loud and lively. It was the end of the work week, and the six of us were crammed in the van, holding our empty food containers, telling jokes, blasting music and talking over the rushing wind that hit the open windows along the sun-drenched Highway 101.

But when we reached the farm, the atmosphere changed. Unthinkingly, we split in different directions toward different blueberry bushes. A hush of concentration fell over us.

Soon I was in the midst of branches and surrounded by green leaves starting to blush crimson. I gently pulled handfuls of ripe berries off the delicate branches, my friends nowhere to be seen. Sometimes Id hear two people call to one another, their far-off voices muffled by the many bushes. But otherwise it was me, tiny twittering birds, the occasional snap of a twig and the echoing ping, ping, ping of berries entering my pail. The repetitive motion was calming, and everything was bathed in the rosy glow of a warm, Indian Summer twilight.

Cranguyma Farms blueberry patch is more like an orchard; most of the plants are well over six feet tall. According to the farms website, the bushes are 60 years old. The blueberry patch is located on Sandridge Road and 113th Lane, just north of Long Beach, Wash. Its open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., picking pails are provided, and the blueberry harvest stretches from July through October. The farm has such a long season because it cultivates seven varieties of blueberries that ripen at different times of the summer and into autumn. When I think of blueberries, I picture July. But when I visited Cranguyma in October, some of the bushes were so full of fruit that you could plant your feet in one spot for 15 minutes and simply reach for berries that the bushes happily supplied.

We filled our buckets that day (and our mouths) with sweet, tart blueberries, a bountiful harvest that epitomized the warm, late summer weather here on the North Coast.