Angie Kleinau has seen a lot of blueberries over the years at her farm on West Gum Road. She and her husband started producing blueberries there more than 30 years ago, and they now have seven-plus acres of thriving, tall blueberry bushes neatly arranged in rows, mowed clean in between and, come the first of July each year, loaded with delicious, sweet, dark blue berries ripe for picking.

“Once they are ripe, it’s easy picking for two weeks,” she tells a customer eager to taste some of this year’s produce from the approximately 4,000 plants on the property. “After the second week the picking gets harder,” as the berries get scarce.

Kleinau expects to open to the public on July 6, she told the Pulse the last week of June.

The Blueberry Patch is a you-pick operation, meaning customers visit the fields and pick the berries they want, and the farm charges by the pound. Prices can vary based on that season’s yields, Kleinau says, but previous years have seen prices at $4 or $5 per pound.

“I try and stay pretty close to the grocery stores’ prices,” she says.

Keep in mind, this is a natural, local product, attempting to match the price of corporate, mass-produced, chemical-filled fare.

“I’m not officially certfied organic, but we have not sprayed grass or ground in 12 years,” Kleinau says.

If a customer is not able to pick for themselves, or simply doesn’t have the time, there are a limited about of pre-picked berries available for an additional charge.

“We do ask that you give us at least two days’ notice, though, just to be sure we have enough on hand,” Kleinau says. “We don’t take anything out of the picking fee; we just pay the people who pick them.”

And some customers have a preference on who picks their berries for them—their favorite picker, one who knows their taste. And in some cases, different folks prefer different berries.

“Some like the very sweet, juicy ones; some like the under-ripe ones for recipes; some like the small, tart ones,” Kleinau says.

The good folks at the Blueberry Patch have experimented to find the right varieties of berries and irrigation system, and have certainly provided lots of local families with nice blue gems for their desserts and dishes over the past decades.

“We have a serious customer base as soon as we’re open each year who will come for 30, 40 or 50 pounds apiece, and freeze them,” Kleinau says.

But much more important to her than berries are the customers she has encountered.

“It’s about the people,” she says.

Em Hoff, a long-time Blueberry Patch fan and friend of Kleinau’s who actually volunteers a great deal of her time and energy at the patch, recounted a time when a gentleman asked her why she was spending her time picking berries.

“Because,” Hoff told him, “the people who pick these berries are special.”

“He stopped and looked at me and said softly, ‘Does that mean I’m special?’

“‘Why, yes,'” Hoff told the man. “He said, ‘No one has ever told me I’m special,'” and went along picking his berries, but with a new sense of contentment about him, Hoff said.

Another customer told Kleinau a very personal, nearly tragic story.

“I think that she was very genuine; she waited years to tell me. But she said that she had made up her mind that she was going to kill herself; she had planned it all out to make it look like an accident. But she saw one of our signs on the bulletin board at a store and said, ‘You know, I’ve never picked blueberries before,’ and came out here.”

It was at the Blueberry Patch, serenely picking berries and reflecting, that she decided her family and financial problems were not enough to end her life over, Kleinau said.

The Blueberry Patch has a playground for kids just next to the berry fields, under a nice layer of shade.

One mother with an active young boy expressed her gratitude for such a wonderful place for the whole family.

“Thank you,” the mother told Kleinau, with tears in her eyes. “This is the only place we can come where my son can be free and I don’t feel like I have to correct him.”

Special kids have a special place in the Kleinaus’ hearts; Dick Kleinau, who has since passed away, actually founded Special Kids, a Murfreesboro nonprofit providing services for special needs children, regardless of their family’s ability to pay.

Back on the farm, Angie will gladly provide blueberry recipes and tips to anyone who asks—the Blueberry Patch even has its own cookbook available, loaded with lots of recipes involving blueberries—but she is even more ready and willing to hand out the Cody challenge to her friends and customers.

Cody, Kleinau’s grandson, was the inspiration for Special Kids.
The Cody Challenge is:
– Live a brutally honest faith
– Respect others
– Love God with all your heart
– Focus on the needs of others ahead of yourself
– Be grateful for every day
– Love your parents

I could go on and on about blueberries. About how perfect that plump, dark one tastes, about how you may want to put some in a dish of ice cream after a few hours of picking in the July sun, about how it’s important to shop local and support area agriculture, about how you can connect with nature peacefully picking berries and listening to birds, about the superior taste of the local, natural product, about how parents and children make great picking teams (tall people get the high ones, short people get the low ones!), about jams, jellies and health benefits; but I’ll let you ask Kleinau if you want to know more, and antioxidants and pies aside, she’ll tell you about the true power of blueberries, and of God’s special people.

The Blueberry Patch is located at 5942 West Gum Road. For more information, call (615) 893-7940. For more information on Special Kids, visit specialkidstn.com.

If you go:
From Murfreesboro, take Broad Street PAST Joe B. Jackson Parkway, and turn right on Elam Road. Immediately after crossing under I-24, take a left on West Gum Road. (Note: Elam Road and Broad Street intersect twice; do not take the first turn unless you want to take the scenic route.)