Spring Tea Party ....

Everyone enjoyed the funny sandwiches...

pinkies out!

Pruning in the cold is hard work, but we take coffee breaks and eat something delicious. Here's the recipe for this weeks break:

APPLE- MAPLE PUDDING CAKE with

Manoff Market Gardens Cider

2 cup all-purpose flour

3 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

3 tbsp butter, room temperature

½ cup sugar

2 eggs

2/3 cup milk.

3 cups Granny Smith
 and/or Gold Rush apple slices mixed with:

          1 tbsp sugar

          1 tsp cinnamon

          1 tsp ground ginger

          1/2 tsp chopped candied ginger 
or more if you like ginger!

               

Syrup:

1 cup Manoff Market Gardens Apple cider

1 cup Real Maple Syrup

Heat oven to 350°.

For Batter:
 In a small bowl combine flour, 
bkg pwder and salt.

In a medium bowl, cream butter 
and 1/2 cup sugar.
 Beat in eggs.

Stir  in flour mixture, a third at a time 
alternating with milk.

In an ungreased 9x13 pan- 
put apples(mixed with 1 tbsp. sugar and spices)Pour  batter over apple mixture making 

sure  all apple pieces are covered.

Combine Syrup and Cider in a saucepan 
over high heat and bring to a boil, stirring often.
 (Couple minutes)

Pour over batter; it will sink.

(ignore how it looks at this time-
it's not pretty!)

Bake 35-45 minutes 
or until toothpick inserted into

the center of the cake (not liquid) 
comes out clean.

Delicious over vanilla ice cream 
or for coffee break.

Apple Pruning begins.

Cute new Orchard Tractor...

Hale loves the snow!

Apple Bloom

The Stayman Apples are really blooming this year! The only apple that's not blooming like crazy is the Mutsu, which we probably overcropped last year.
Hale loves to check out anything growing in the orchard.Strawberries made it through the cold night with a little help from the row cover and the tunnels. We'd love to see some early strawberries!!

almost Christmas!

We have only a few days left. There are still Fuji, Cameo, Mutsu, Gold Rush and Pink Lady apples left. We still have jams and apple butter, applesauce and some canned peaches. I will have hours from 10-5 through Wednesday. Don't forget to pick up your pies on Wednesday if you have placed an order!
We'll close after Thursday at noon. I plan to be at the farm on Saturdays in January. I'll try to let you know what we have then. Call if you need anything special and leave a number where I can get back to you. Thanks for getting us through the year.
Amy and Gary

Christmas Pie Orders due this week!

Don't miss your last chance until next June. Here's the list:
Regular Apple, Apple Crumb, Rustic Apple, Pumpkin, Sour Cherry, Mixed Berry and Mince.
Of course the fruit is from the farm and everything else is homemade, so it's amazing.
Call the farm or stop in with your order. Pick up is Wed. 12/23.
We STILL have apples available, Fuji,Cameo,Mutsu,Sun Crisp,Granny Smith,Pink Lady and Gold Rush. I'm shipping out gift baskets daily, so hurry up and get your order in!
Gary and Chris are making cider this morning
so be sure to get some when you're at the farm.
Anya did a great job making food for us on Saturday at the Open House.
There's still some soups, hummus, and amazing cakes you can get-
all available to make your life easier and tastier!
Sarah's centerpieces are selling but you can get one, too. Just stop on in.
Karen's beaded serving pieces are almost gone from the farm but you can visit her open house this Wednesday. Check out her website for more info: www.kasartware.com/blog/

fall on the farm

Gold rush are almost ready to pick.
New Strawberries have taken well in the tunnel.. next year they'll be protected from the weather.

Pretty view past the blackberries and apples to the back of the farm.

busy, rainy week

Wow. We jumped ship last Sat and went to GA to visit my brother Doug and his family.
It's amazingly nice to leave town! We returned just as the rains arrived at the farm and managed to get some apples picked: the sun crisp, winesap, stayman and fuji.
We had the boys pick raspberries on Sat. while Gary drove to the Gettysburg area with our applesauce apples. 150 bushels of apples made the trek out and we hope to pick up our applesauce before the week is out. I know people are planning to get their applesauce as soon as it's in because we sold out last year. So don't be the last one!!
Today we finally got all the parts for the cider press and set up a trial pressing. Stop by for a sample and to get your fresh pressed juice! It's amazing how something so simple can take so long to do...it's only been on the list for 5 years now. But we're ready to move forward and I know Chris is planning some Hard Cider for the holidays...
I'll have pictures soon, couldn't find the connection this evening or maybe I'm just too tired.

Apple Time

This is the week the boys are doing all the end of season chores. They're tying up the new blackberry canes, amazing how much they grew this year! Boys and Blackberries...
Gary planted strawberries on black plastic in the tunnels. These will be our early, protected berries for next year. Gotta always try new ways to make this work.
The HoneyCrisp apples are everybody's favorite. We have a nice supply as well as 6 other varieties right now.

Apples - it's time!

The boys are picking Gala apples, they're huge this year! Guess the rain was good for something...

We're still picking RASPBERRIES out of the tunnel. Don't they look delicious!

White Hale Season is upon us - don't miss your last peach!!

End of Summer? No Way!!!

We are still picking summer fruit - peaches, nectarines, raspberries and blackberries. How can it be time for school to start? We did pick the first 3 apples - Zestar, Ginger Gold and Sansa.

This week we'll pick the Gala Apple. We're picking the JH Hale yellow peaches, still picking yellow Nectarines and the white peaches this week are NJ252 (before they named it) and

Lady Nancy. I like Lady N because it has a yellow racing stripe which seems very daring in a white peach!

We are missing our college kids - Hillary, Liz, Eric, Austin, Casey D. and Kaleigh but wishing them the best as they pursue their education. We still have "the boys" for a few more days - Michael, Michael and David - until High School starts. We should see about Home Schooling ...

Anyway Casey S.is here for a few weeks so be sure to say "HI" when you're here - and then it's just us Regulars.

Peaches are delicious!

We had 2 beautiful days Friday and Saturday. The peaches are picking much better and we expect to harvest a lot of Sun Hi and Loring this week, both great for putting up.

The raspberries are coming full tilt and the blackberries have really sweetened up. We are definately planning on a good Peach Festival next Sat. the 15th. The Ernie's Choice should be really nice for picking if we leave them hanging this week. I know t-storms are forecast, but it'd be nice to just see some gentle rain this week instead. Bill Short has volunteered to lend his hay wagon again so we can do hayrides up to the peach orchard. All our friends and family are setting aside their Saturday plans to help out at the grill, entertainment, ice cream making and general being helpful. Thanks to all who have volunteered!!

Sam, Hillary, Casey, Chelsea and I finished the Tshirts for the festival.

This year we designed and printed our own. WOW!! They'll be available for sale on Saturday. Plan on spending some time seeing the farm and enjoying the day. We'll start around 9:30 and end around 4:30.

Gary says the Zestar apples are almost ready to pick!! These little trees have a huge apple crop...

Cherries, will they survive the weather?

Weather, birds who would have thought it was such a pain to grow cherries? The earlier sweet cherries exploded from the rain. But we had a couple sunny days to sweeten the rest of the crop and ripen it. So yesterday Sam, Hillary and Casey picked about 100 quarts of cherries. Whooee!

We'll probably try to be open friday or saturday to sell them.

The sour cherry crop looks like just enough to make a couple batches of jam which would be great for the holidays. Of course, Gary wants to make sure he gets a couple pies, and the pie lady wants some as well so she can make some sour cherry pies for the market. If you didn't get any last year, you are missing something special!

The crew is working on thinning out the red raspberry plants in the tunnels. It could be a nice late August - September crop this year.

Gary and Mike H. were working in the orchard yesterday. The baby honey crisp trees needed to be tied to their stakes. They have a nice crop, also!

More blossoms...

The sour cherries look great! Guess we better figure out how to pit them.... New Strawberries are happy and ready to bloom...







OK, so a few days of 90 degree weather and we're in full bloom. Everything. The apples are all fluffy with puff balls of potential fruit.

We've been trying to brush the white nectarine blossoms to thin them out a bit, they look like azalea bushes! We did get through many of the donut peaches. If it doesn't rain tomorrow we can keep working our way through the Raritan Rose white peaches. Looks like this weekend will bring full bloom to the strawberries. Yeah!
We dug up the renegade blackberry runners and even got them planted. Now for a little rain for our "reserve" planting.

apple bloom

Isn't this a pretty sight?