Gala apples!

The orchard is open again! 

Starting Saturday, the Galas will be ready to pick!!! 

Galas are a medium to small sized apple with a great crunch.  They are perfect for eating out of hand, and good for both applesauce and baking.

Last year the Ruby Macs were ready before the Gala, but not this year so if you are wondering if you missed them, you haven't!  They are still about 2 weeks away from being ripe.  

We still have some Gravenstein apples left, and some Bartlett pears.   I am guessing we will have both for another week unless we get a big crowd this weekend.  Come get them this weekend if you MUST have some of either!


Other Farm Happenings:

Things have slowed to a different pace on the rest of the farm.  While we aren't harvesting anything this week, there still seems plenty to do.

Mostly we are irrigating fields that have already been harvested.  If we have grown an annual seed crop (only grows one season), we lightly work (drive a tractor with some sort of implement pulled behind) the top few inches of the field to stir up any seed that is left sitting on top of the soil, then we water it and wait a few days so the seeds will sprout.  This gets rid of lots of the seed that is left in the field so it doesn't stick around for the next year.  Even though we grew this seed to harvest this year, next year if we have a different crop in that field, that same seed would be considered a weed.  A few of those fields we plan to plant Tall Fescue grass seed and that is planted in the fall.  After the "weed" seed has sprouted, then we work it again to uproot it to kill it..  Then we either have to plow it, or disc it several times or whatever needs done to get it smooth enough to plant the next crop.  Like I said, the grass seed we plant now, but other seeds, like annual seeds, we would wait until the spring to plant.

We have one picking of our blueberries left with a machine picker, and a corn field to harvest and plus lots of apples!

Other than that there is always yard work, and maintenance things to work on.

Looking forward to seeing you all this season!

Don't forget to share any apple recipes you love to make.  I'd love to add some more to our blog to give other people ideas of what they can use all their apples for.