(intense violin music) (fire crackling) - Fire is really humbling.

The energy that creates such great destruction, and yet in this case, is the cause of renewal and regrowth and stimulating of a better crop ahead.

It really, you know, hits you in several different layers.

It's awesome in a very deep sense.

(intense violin music continues) My name is Nicolas Lindholm.

I am a organic wild blueberry grower.

My wife and I live in the town of Penobscot and we own and manage wild blueberry fields all over the Blue Hill Peninsula.

(tractor engine cranking) Wild blueberry production, the past 50 years, or a couple generations, has become a two year production cycle.

The plants need to be pruned.

You wanna remove the plants that produced fruit last year and then underground the rhizomes, which is a part of the plant, that where all the energy is stored, is still very much alive.

And they will send up new growth and that first year's growth will not produce fruit.

It'll just produce a lot of vegetative stems and leaves and then buds that fall.

And then it's the second year that you'll get an abundant fruit.

(dramatic violin music) (fire crackling) Burning is basically a pruning technique.

You're basically removing the plant material above ground, so the plant that is underground will send up that new, very aggressive and productive growth.

Mowing is much more common today than burning, but some of us still burn.

Some of that is done either with oil or propane burning and some of it is done like we do here, spreading straw.

As an organic grower, burning gives me a lot of control over several insect, disease and weeds cycles, that mowing does not encourage.

Burning actually increases yields.

So for many of those reasons, we spread straw and burn at least several fields in our production scheme right now, every year.

(dramatic violin music continues) To burn a blueberry field by hand, we spread straw previously.

And today, with the ideal conditions and the crew, we start by burning a perimeter, kind of a firebreak, around the outside of the field.

(upbeat music) You guys on the inside crew, when the wind changes, or we're changing direction and the heat and smoke are going towards those guys, that's where you can give them a break by spraying above the flames to just kinda cool and damp it.

(upbeat music continues) The crew starts in a corner on the upwind side, on edges that really need protecting.

Like there's a house on one side.

So we light the outside edge, have part of the crew putting that outside edge out, with their water pumps.

And then we light about 20, 25 feet in from that an inner edge and have the other part of the crew putting out that inner edge.

Those two edges burned together to create that 25 foot firebreak and we move along the outside edge.

Until we get to a point where we feel we can let the rest of the field go.

(upbeat music continues) It's very nerve-wracking.

I try and keep a tight control and eye on what everyone is doing all at once, including the fire and the people.

And so I'm kind of walking on pins and needles every single second.

But when things are going well, it's actually very calm.

And then quite literally, I feel a weight lifting off my shoulder and going up in smoke.

(nervously laughing) (upbeat music continues) Fire is such a destructible force.

It's such an uncontrollable force or unpredictable force.

And yet, in this use of it, it's such a reproductive force.

And so for me, the kind of the metaphors are so rich and so deep.

It means a lot to me, in terms of harnessing that destructive force for new growth and literal rebirth.

And like the fire and creating new growth, I feel renewed from the whole process.

It's like a spring ritual of getting rejuvenated and knowing that the cycles will continue.

(upbeat music ending) (upbeat music ending) (soft clicking)