Tucked away off Madison Avenue near the intersection with Valley Road is a narrow driveway which leads up to Stacy Lewars’ farm and business, The Bainbridge Island Blueberry Company.

For a mere $4 per pound, The Bainbridge Blueberry Company offers visitors the opportunity to wander the lanes of blueberries, picking to their hearts content — or until all the blueberries get picked.

This is not to say that Lewars doesn’t have more than enough blueberries to go around; on her best day she said pickers walked out with around 215 pounds of blueberries. Lewars said that despite putting up some serious numbers, her plants are still relatively young.

At just 8 years old, the plants at the Bainbridge Blueberry Company are still mere toddlers compared to the generations-long lifespan they can live.

“Up in Skagit, their plants are 70 years old. I think Chimacum and Finn River have some that are 22. We’re babies still,” Lewars said.

Teresa Yette, a visitor to the blueberry company, had some babies of her own out in the blueberry rows. Yette had brought her infant daughter Kahalia and two young children, Kailani and Kekoa. The family Yette was also accompanied in the rows by relatives Jessica Fresco, Lea and Maya Chand.

Though the weather reports suggested the day would be a scorcher, these blueberry pickers showed up early to beat the heat.

A rather prolific gatherer of berries, Maya Chand explained the rules.

“You pick only the ripe ones,” she said. “The blue ones are ripe; the pink ones and the white ones and the purple ones are not ripe.”

“I almost ate a purple one,” confessed Kailani.

“I thought you guys weren’t supposed to be eating them, you’re just picking them,” Teresa Yette said. The kids all agreed that it was important to sample a berry or two in order to decide which ones to look for, something Maya found out earlier.

“The teeny-tiny blue ones are so sour,” she added.

In 2011 Lewars was driving past the farm when she saw a real estate flyer for the property.

“We had berry picked here with my children and my mother-in-law for a number of years. So I went home with the real estate flyer and I was like, ‘I should buy that farm,’” Lewars said.

“You should not buy a farm after you turn 40 years old, but I did!” Lewars added.

Despite her warning, the island’s reaper of blueberries said she wouldn’t still be in the business if she didn’t love it.

“You forget the hardships when the season rolls around and then the next season rolls around and here I am six years into it,”

One might think that after six years of eating copious amounts of blueberries — including the ever-pesky, lip-curlingly tart ones which always seem to make it into every handful –– Lewars said neither she nor her family had grown tired of the fruit.

“Not at all, we’ll take 40 or 50 [pounds] in our freezer.”

“We eat them year-round.”

As for her favorite recipes for blueberry-based treats, Lewars said she enjoyed fresh-picked berries the most. Close runners-up were: blueberry Lemon squares, a blueberry crumble and blueberry kale smoothies.

As for the recipe specifics, Lewars said those would have to be U-pick as well, since she wasn’t about to let loose any of her own special blueberry recipes.

Due to fluctuating hours of operation Lewars recommends visitors call ahead to ensure the stand will be open for business: 206-855-0947.