I’m Jake Newman. The Portland Logbook is my love letter to this city: the food worth hunting down, the history that refuses to die, the corners you only find if you’re paying attention.

The Blueberry We Invented and the One We Inherited

I have lived in Maine long enough to know I am supposed to have very strong feelings about wild blueberries.

They are smaller. They taste better. They turn pancakes purple. The large grocery-store ones are apparently for people who enjoy disappointment.

That was more or less the full extent of my knowledge.

But lowbush and highbush blueberries are not really two versions of the same fruit. One still grows as a genetically mixed landscape. The other was carefully bred to become a dependable crop.

If you have never been to a Maine wild blueberry field, it may look like one continuous carpet of plants. Underneath, though, it is a patchwork of genetically different colonies spreading through underground stems. A single field can contain as many as 1,500 distinct blueberry plants.

Each patch can produce berries with its own color, shape, sweetness, acidity, and ripening time. So when you eat a handful of wild blueberries, you are not eating the same flavor thirty times. You are eating thirty slightly different blueberries all at once.

That may be why they taste more complicated. Less like one single blueberry flavor and more like a crowd. Some sweet, some sour, some dusty blue, and some nearly black.

Researchers studying their aroma found a real difference, too. Lowbush blueberries were dominated by compounds called esters, which tend to smell fruity and sweet. Highbush berries contained more of the compounds associated with green, herbal, and floral aromas.

The large highbush blueberry has a very different history. The familiar berry we buy in clear plastic containers was only successfully domesticated a little over a century ago.

In the early 1900s, New Jersey farmer Elizabeth White began working with USDA botanist Frederick Coville. Together, they searched the woods for promising wild blueberry plants, then selected and bred them for qualities people wanted: larger fruit, dependable growing habits, and berries that could be commercially cultivated.

Their first crop went to market in 1916.

It was an enormous agricultural success. They helped turn a difficult wild fruit into something that could be grown reliably, packed into a truck, and eaten almost anywhere in the world.

But designing food always involves choices.

Highbush blueberries became larger, firmer, and more consistent. Wild lowbush blueberries remained small, variable, and slightly unruly.

Agriculture usually treats inconsistency as a problem. With wild blueberries, it may be the best part.

Highbush blueberries are excellent eaten fresh, especially when you want the fruit to stay intact. Wild blueberries take over whatever you put them in. They disappear into a pancake, pie, or muffin, staining the whole thing purple and making every bite taste more intensely like blueberry.

A highbush blueberry stays politely intact.

A wild blueberry becomes the whole dish.

This is a particularly good weekend to test the difference yourself. Wild Blueberry Weekend is happening August 1 and 2, with farms, tastings, and events across Maine.

Here is the full map.

Find a Wild Blueberry Weekend Stop

Maine’s Canadian Sister Is Just Across the Water

We drove almost ten hours from Portland to Nova Scotia this week to check on my boyfriend’s family farm, which has been in the family since the 1700s.

The drive was absolutely beautiful, with blueberry fields stretching as far as the eye could see.

It was also ten hours, which is a very long time to sit in a car and keep convincing yourself the next gas station coffee might be better than the last one.

Somewhere along the way, I learned there was a much more fun way we could have done it.

The CAT is a high-speed car ferry that runs between Bar Harbor and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. You drive your car directly onto the boat, cross the Gulf of Maine in about three and a half hours, then drive off in Canada with your luggage, snacks, and everything else still packed inside.

I have not actually taken The CAT yet. Naturally, I learned about it immediately after choosing the ten-hour drive.

Driving directly from Portland to Halifax takes roughly nine or ten hours. The ferry route can take closer to eleven once you include the drive to Bar Harbor, check-in, the crossing, customs, and the drive from Yarmouth to Halifax.

So this is not necessarily a travel hack, and I am not promising that it will save you time.

But there is a pretty big difference between driving for ten straight hours and spending part of the day drinking coffee on a boat while someone else worries about navigation.

More importantly, you do not have to rush directly to Halifax.

The ferry drops you in southwestern Nova Scotia, giving you an excuse to slowly work your way along the coast through Shelburne, Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, and the smaller towns in between.

And if you love Maine, I think you will love Nova Scotia.

It feels a little like Maine’s Canadian sister. There are old wooden houses, fishing towns, working waterfronts, antique stores, rocky beaches, and small family cemeteries that have been sitting beside the same farms for generations.

It feels familiar almost immediately, but different enough that you still want to pull over every fifteen minutes.

Halifax has some of the same things I love about Portland: old brick buildings, a busy waterfront, great coffee, good food, and streets that feel best explored on foot. It is much larger, but there is something familiar about it.

The smaller towns have that same feeling you get driving through coastal Maine, where the houses, harbors, farms, and families all seem connected to one another.

People know who built each farmhouse, which family lived there, and where everyone eventually ended up.

We came to check on one old family farm and ended up finding family graves, forgotten roads, and pieces of a story that had been sitting there for hundreds of years.

I should also mention that most of this newsletter was written from that farm, which is in the middle of nowhere, using a hotspot and a dream that everything would somehow load long enough for me to finish this week’s issue.

So if you love Portland and Maine, and want to explore somewhere that feels connected to them without feeling exactly the same, Nova Scotia should probably be on your list.

The CAT will not necessarily get you there faster.

But after driving the entire way, I am extremely qualified to tell you that ten hours in a car is ten hours in a car.

Next time, we are taking the boat.

Take The CAT to Nova Scotia

Portside Real Estate Group

Thinking of Moving?

🏡 Hi its me Jake! I write The Portland Logbook, but I also help people buy and sell homes in and around Portland.

If a move is on your mind, I’m always happy to help you think it through.

Lets get a coffee!

THIS WEEKS CONDITIONS
☀️ SUNRISE: 5:28 AM
🌅 SUNSET: 8:06 PM
✨ Local Openings: The Hut by Twin Tide Kitchen
✨ Local Artist of the Week: Portraits as you pass
❤️ Local Job Listings: Oun Lidos

🐾 Adoptable Buddies of the Week! 🐾

🐶 Daisy – 3 yrs
All the way from Puerto Rico and ready for a fresh start in Maine. Daisy is full of kisses, loves her toys, and has the kind of eyes that'll melt your heart. She's looking for an active family and a couch to snuggle on at the end of the day.

🐶 Bobby – 5 yrs
A gentle soul with big brown eyes and an even bigger heart. Bobby loves a little play, a lot of sunshine, and long afternoon naps. If you're looking for a calm, loyal companion, he's your guy.

🐱 Ophelia – 4 yrs
A beautiful orange cat who just needs someone willing to give her a little time. Once she settles in, she'll greet you with sweet little trills, curl up on the bed, and remind you why patient cats are often the most rewarding.

If the link doesn’t open anymore, it means they’ve already been adopted!

🐕 Interested? Check them out here