20 minutes northwest near Altoona, Blueberry Hill Farm is 15 acres of u-pick blueberries on a hill. Actual hill. You can see for miles, which in Lake County is rare.
April to May is season. The farm gives you a bucket and points you at the rows. Rabbiteye and Southern Highbush varieties. The Rabbiteye are bigger, the Highbush are sweeter. You’ll eat half, pick half. Nobody weighs what’s in your stomach.
The owners, the Carter family, have run it since 1985. They’ll tell you how to pick: roll the berry between your fingers. If it drops, it’s ready. If you have to pull, it’s not. They also make blueberry muffins, blueberry jam, and blueberry ice cream on site. You eat it at picnic tables under a pole barn.
It’s $4 a pound. Kids get a free small bucket. There are chickens running around and a goat named Pete. It’s not Disney. It’s better.
Mount Dora restaurants buy from here in season. 1921 does a blueberry cobbler. The Olive Oil Company does a blueberry balsamic. But you can get them yourself.
Local Tip: Go at 9am on a Thursday. Cooler, no field trips, and the birds haven’t taken the best ones yet. Wear a hat. There’s no shade in a blueberry field.