Lou and Nancy Sidell bought Perseverance Farm in 1987. The property is 316 acres with about 100 acres of wild sour-top wild blueberries and 216 acres of woods. The property is cobbled together from several old farmsteads.
The farm is a short drive down Campbell Road (below left) in Kingsbury, ME.
The Barren Mountains (below right) are visible from the blueberry fields.
The Cowett family owned the farm in the 1930's and 40's.
Amos Cowett is shown on his Jitterbug in 1946 (below).
The former Kingsbury Blacksmith shop (pictured below) is on the property. Today the building is used for storage.
We're still adding to the old rock walls. It's hard to imagine how they dug up and moved all these rocks without modern equipment!
Blueberry harvesting has changed over the years, too, but many of our clients still use the handrakes.
The big harvester (below right) was formerly used on well groomed, de-rocked and fairly level fields. The walking model (below left) is now used to harvest most of the berries sold locally.
The older models of winnowing machines (pictured below) easily outperform today's box type with the squirrel cage fan. The original gas engines have been replaced with quiet electric motors at Perseverance Wild Blueberry Farm.