Sue's Blues: East Portland Grower Carries on Family Tradition Started by Grandfather in Early 1950's

Oregon Grower Makes Sure to “Take Care of the Blueberries”

“It's special because my grandfather planted them,” Sue Anderson explained on a recent blustery Friday inside the cozy and warmly appointed home her grandparents built a few steps below the secluded rolling hillside that's sheltered at least 300 cultivated blueberry bushes for 50 years.

The vast majority of the original Atlantic, Burlington, Concord, Dixie, Jersey and Pemberton variety blueberry plants are still there and still producing at Sue's Blueberries on Barbara Welch Lane in extreme east Portland a mile or so south of Foster Road.

With all that history – Anderson's grandfather Eugene Single was in fact the No. 3 registered grower with the state's Blueberry Growers Association back in 1954 – these Oregon Blueberries have become a lot more than savory blue produce for Anderson and her family.

“I've done this so much in my life that the one summer I wasn't here I kept thinking,'I should be doing something else, you know? I should be there picking,'” recalled the sprightly 51-year-old grower. “It's one of those things you do every summer. You take care of the blueberries.”

Sue and her husband Dave Anderson have tended to the family legacy since the late 1980's when her grandfather was winding down the business he had started in 1952 as a means to support his retirement from the house painting trades.

“Grandpa, he was a painter and knew a lot of people in the big buildings downtown. They would call him up and give him orders for like 50 flats,” she remembered. “Grandpa would go deliver them. Later, he still would come out and at least prune the bushes as he got older. He was 92 when he did the last crop.”

To this day, Sue's Blueberries has several customers cultivated by the founder. Over the years Anderson herself has even made rare deliveries to homebound original patrons and still personally readies orders phoned in by some of those same customers that dealt with her grandfather.

Talk about continuity.

Prior to its current incarnation, this Multnomah County operation was known as Eugene & Mary's. The grounds have always been small, covering less than an acre. Two years ago, the average size among approximately 275 blueberry businesses in Oregon was roughly 10 acres. That's up from an average of 4 acres in 1980. Most of today's Oregon Blueberry growers still run their facilities as family operations.

Preparations for the season at Sue's begin with intensive pruning in February. “I did two rows, about 60 bushes,” Dave said recalling the effort. Once the pruning is complete, sawdust is spread around the plants to mulch and promote drainage. And finally a layer of fertilizer is laid down.

Much of the work gets done in the summer months when the U-Pick business generally starts full swing around July 14. Like her grandfather before her, Anderson still places signs – some painted years ago by one of her sisters – on the main neighboring throughways announcing Sue's Blueberries is open. And usually the public can't get enough. “Some folks are waiting several weeks before we put my signs up,” Anderson said with a tone of pleasant surprise.

Customers have even been known to get a little too excited about Sue's Blueberries. “They sometimes don't tell us when they're here. They just go on up,” remarked Anderson in the home she and her husband bought from her grandparents in 1985 which stands between the roadway and the blueberry hill. “They'll write it down and leave the money under the scale on the front porch.”

Sue's Blueberries no longer makes deliveries downtown. However, some of those original customers no doubt make their way out to the lush pastoral setting for U-Pick along with the rest of the public. Normal business hours are 8am-6pm Monday through Saturday once the season opens through the start of the school fall term. Sometimes there’s a short re-opening for the Labor Day weekend when conditions merit.

Both Anderson and her husband work for the surrounding school districts. Now a teacher's assistant at Centennial School, she worked in the Pleasant Valley Grade School library for 20 years. He is an elementary and secondary music teacher for North Clackamas District 12, along with performing the double bass for the Portland Opera and Oregon Ballet.

“I think everybody was glad when we did this,” Anderson said recounting the extended family's relief when she and her husband took up the overall blueberry duties from her grandfather. Her father Gene had helped his father to originally start the business but had his own career as an engineer. “Oh, it's a lot of work. I don't think anybody else was in a position to take this on.”

These days Anderson isn't the only one of her family's generation cultivating blueberries. She is the eldest of five sisters and one brother, all of which helped with the family blueberries in their younger years. The house she and her siblings grew up in is only yards from her present home. But just recently her brother decided to get back into the business. And Sue's Blueberries offered up about 25 of the original plants to help brother John Single start his own blueberry operation in Warren, Oregon.

Just another sign of continuity and family tradition.

Anderson’s three children have all helped with the family blueberries, but none will likely have the chance to inherit Sue's Blueberries for some time if the current owner has her way.

The business namesake has a meticulously detailed plot map showing every blueberry row and individual bush. Each variety is written down along with the recent careful upkeep and maintenance. Sue consulted the map when noting how removing the Jersey bushes for brother John gave her the opportunity to plant several new types, including Berkley, Blue Ray, Chandler, Patriot and Toro.

Definitely not a sign of someone wanting to pass the blueberry torch any time soon.