LINCOLNVILLE — This week, all across Maine, wherever there are wild blueberry barrens you’ll find people of all ages in the fields picking the tiny, sweet blue jewels the state is known for - at least as much as its lobsters of course. In some fields, machines are used for the harvest, in others its an old fashioned hand-held wood or metal rake. Maine wild blueberries are tiny and delicate, and thus require special care to collect.

In some places, just one or two people will spend as long as two weeks hand-raking thousands of pounds of blueberries while they are at their most ripe. In other places, a machine with two operators will do the work, one driving it around the field with mechanical rakes spinning through the bushes and the other swapping filled totes with empty totes.

Once the berries are harvested, it’s time to clean out the detritus that comes with the crop. Sticks, bugs, stems, leaves, you name it.

Handpicking blueberries, like locals are allowed to do for one weekend at Beech Hill Preserve after the commercial rakers have done their work, usually creates the cleanest crop. Very few leaves or unripe or green berries. It’s a slow process, but in nice weather it’s a great way to spend an hour or two outdoors.

Hand-raking is the next cleanest, because a raker can see an unripe patch, or spot a pile of deer droppings and steer clear. Machine harvesting blueberries brings in the most “stuff” that needs to be cleaned out before the berries can go to market, and eventually into your favorite blueberry cobbler recipe.

Hand-cleaning small batches (enough to fill a half-gallon plastic freezer bag) of Maine wild blueberries can be done by the bowlful, by floating them in cool water and swirling the mass around. Unripe red, yellow and green fruit floats to the surface, even those still attached by tiny stems to ripe berries. Unlucky spiders will also float to the surface, and can be brushed away, as can loose stems and leaves and anything else picked up during the raking.

When you have a barren that produces between 10,000 and 15,000 pounds of wild blueberries, a winnower is the way to go. At the start of the machine, the harvest is poured by hand onto a conveyor belt, which bounces and shakes the berries at the start, to separate the fruit from the stems and leaves. Then, in most modern winnowers, air is used to blow away the larger leaves and stems before the berries move onto a slatted conveyor belt that allows smaller bits of dirt and teeny tiny berries to drop through.

Finally, the best fruit moves to an adjacent conveyor belt, where, in the case of Elderflower Farm Tuesday morning, Aug. 2, a group of seven young people were picking out anything the winnower missed. An eighth individual in the group, a toddler who wished to rename nameless, was working quality control, tasting blueberries while wielding a mighty plastic sword.

Elderflower Farm expects to yield in the 10,000- to 15,000-pound range this year, and uses a machine to harvest their crop. Briar Lyons said it will take about nine days to complete the picking. They sell their MOFGA certified Maine wild blueberries in 5- and 10-pound boxes, like a lot of area blueberry growers.

Related stories:

• Union Fair and Maine Wild Blueberry Festival (Aug. 20-27)

• As summer wanes in Maine, the wild blueberry's arrival makes everything all right