Friday, August 31, 2012

Bartlett Pears -- Pre-Picked!

Still have plenty of Gala and Ruby Macs!

The Galas are especially beautiful this year.  We worked hard at thinning so they are a really nice larger size!

We also have lots of pre-picked Bartlett Pears we are selling.

$11 for a 5 gallon bucket.

$5 for the smaller bucket.




We also do pre-picked apple. ($11 per bucket instead of $9)
Just call ahead or email snofarmer@gmail.com and we can do that for you.  If you need a large amount pre-picked, give us at least a day's notice.  If it is just a few buckets, just drop in and we'll go running! :)

Come out this weekend!  So thankful for the beautiful weather.



Monday, August 27, 2012

Gala Apples are ready.

Gala apples are ready!  

Gala are great for eating, making applesauce and baking.

No camera with me today but this apple below is what a Gala looks like!



Still plenty of beautiful Ruby Macs on the trees too. 
Look at the last post and I have some pictures of those. 


Monday, August 20, 2012

Ruby Macs are ready!

Ruby Macs are just ready.  They are the beautiful red apples with crunchy white inside!
They are part Macintosh and part Rubinstar.

They are great for both baking and eating.






These are a newer apple for us...we have only had them a few years.  Come check them out!



This year we will mark the rows that are ready to pick with both a orange flag and an orange ribbon around the post.  We still hope to figure out an even better system but this is what we will use for the time being.


Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Gravensteins are all gone.

Gravensteins are all gone for the year. 

Honeycrisp and Gala are next to ripen but not ready yet.  My guess would be around the beginning of September but check here before you come because I will post when they are ready!

Friday, August 10, 2012

Gravenstein Update:

Gravensteins are getting close to coming to an end.  There are still some on the trees though.  If you must have, I would come very soon!  There is also a random tree on the south end of the orchard in the old, bigger trees.  You will recognize it by finding many apples on the ground underneath!

The Gala and Honeycrisp are next, but still not ripe yet.  I am excited about the Honeycrisp this year.  They are looking beautiful and are a really nice size.

We have added a picnic area this year so we hope you all take advantage of that!  
We have also changed the parking area a bit.  Hopefully it is more straight forward and also safer for all those kiddos running around!  


In other farm happenings, we are picking our third picking of Bluecrop blueberries!  Once we hit the 3rd picking, we have to pick with a blueberry harvester rather than hand harvesting.  Bluecrop, while they are our favorite kind of eating blueberry, become soft too quickly to be shipped and sold at grocery stores once we get to the 3rd picking.  So instead they are marketed for other purposes, like frozen or put into blueberry muffin mixes, etc.

 When we pick with a machine, they are put into much bigger crates than when we hand harvest.  When we hand harvest, we do not want the berries squished at all.  Machine harvest does not matter so much.  Each of these individual crates hold about 32 lbs of blueberries!  That is a lot!



This is one of our blueberry fields covered with a net.  Makes it a bit more difficult to run a blueberry picker through but it works.  We put up the net when the berries are still green and "roll up" the net after the berries are finished being harvested.  It takes us about two weeks to put it up and one week to roll it up.  We use one of those platform lifts which is much faster than using a ladder.  We are so thankful for that net once it gets later in the season because we see TONS of birds just sitting on top of the net looking longingly down at the berries they can't get to.  HAHAHAHA!!!!  :)  We still have a few fields that are not covered by net and they definitely can get hammered by the birds.  Today when I was leaving the field, I saw flocks of hundreds....sometimes you just have to look away and not think about it when there is just nothing you can do about them.


This field of Coreopsis is just now in its prime blooming!   We raise the flowers for seed.  It is funny how many people stop to take pictures of the fields in full bloom.  I don't really blame them.  I was out there myself!  Now we just wait until the blooms all die down and dry up, and we swath it (cut it and lay it into rows) and combine it (separate the seed from the stock).  This usually happens in September.  I wasn't around for the end last year since I just had a baby so I am looking forward to it this year.



This is our field of Mixed Poppies.  It is just under peak bloom.  It is sad to see the field starting to fade away a bit but also a relief because it just means it will be closer to harvesting!  Flowers can be very labor intensive.  We drive a cultivator through the field a few times to stir up the weeds between the rows, then if there are still certain weeds in the flower row, we have to pull all those by hand.  This field had quite a bit of pigweed but we conquered it and it is all gone!  (If the weed seed is the same size as the flower seed, then they cannot be separated in the seed cleaning process and the flower seed can be contaminated with weed seed. No one likes weeds!!)
 



More blueberry harvest pictures.  Working hard picking out the green ones!




 These white tines rotate slowly and shake rapidly to knock the blueberries off the bush into the catchers below.  It somehow does it without ruining the blueberry bush too.  Pretty impressive. 
Then the catchers bring the blueberries up above onto a belt.  The belt dumps the berries into a crate.  You still can lose a lot of berries on the ground which is painful to see, but it is still more economical to use a machine picker on this 3rd picking than do it by hand.


Well I feel like I have written a novel, so thanks for reading this far if you are still with me! 
 

Getting excited for apple harvest.  Can't wait to see all your faces.