Oakhurst Dairy plans to introduce a wild Maine blueberry milk this spring, and based on the response the announcement got on social media, there will be some eager customers.

“Will they ship to California?” two Facebook users asked. There were outcries from Illinois and New Hampshire about the immediate need for this milk.

“Low fat?” another asked. (Just whole milk for now.) They weighed in on Oakhurst’s choice of possible labels, voting in favor of one that features Maine’s iconic berry, although someone shot down the logo “straight from the barrens” on the grounds that the term has too many connotations.

But the bigger question, asked over and over, was, will this purple milk be made with real wild Maine blueberries? The Oakhurst representative who handles Facebook promised that yes, the berries would be real.

Oakhurst already offers a blueberry ice tea.

Smiling Hill Farm in Westbrook already makes a blueberry milk.

If the new flavor is a hit, that would be good news for wild blueberry growers in Maine. Blueberry farmers continue to increase the yield from the state’s 44,000 acres of blueberry fields. The high yield, coupled with fierce competition from Canada, has led to a glut of wild Maine blueberries on the market. In August the United States Department of Agriculture agreed to buy $10 million worth of the Maine crop, subsidizing the crop for the third year in a row.

Mary Pols can be contacted at 791-6456 or at:

mpols@pressherald.com

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