Harvest Update: Open Season

It's finally happening! Our farm stand is opening this week with pre picked berries! Here are all the details you'll need!

Officially Opening: Wednesday, June 17, 2015 at 9 am
Farm Stand Hours: Monday - Sunday 9 am to 6 pm
What We Have: Pre Picked blueberries, and raspberries. 

We expect our farm stand to be open from June 17, 2015 until August 1, 2015. We estimate our U-Pick blueberries will open around the 4th of July. The price of our U-Pick blueberries will be $2.75 per pound. Keeping an eye on our social media, and here on our blog is the best way to stay informed about our harvest. 

If your wanting more than a flat of raspberries we kindly ask you call a head and place an order with us. You can reach us at 541-752-0460, please call during business hours. 

We are so excited to finally start the season, and we can't wait to see you all out at our farm stand and in the field this summer! 

Summer Is Coming! The Low Down on Our Strawberries

As we said back in January, 2015 is a huge year for us! So far we have announced we would be producing Black Raspberries, Aronia Berries, and now we proudly announce we will be offering a 
U-Pick field of Strawberries in the summer of 2016. 

We really like having strawberries, but we were running into a problem of having an over abundance of product in the field. Meaning we were unable to pick all of the fruit out there, and that means we were loosing money. So we went and put our thinking caps on, after some time we came up with this idea:

We will be opening a U-Pick Strawberry Patch!

How exciting? We will have not only U-Pick Blueberries but also U-Pick Strawberries. We are thrilled to finally be able to do what so many of you have been asking for in providing a certified organic U-Pick Strawberry patch. 

Now, here's the bad news, we need time to get our act together, and get the plants going. So we will not have strawberries this summer, instead we will be opening our Strawberry U-Pick in the summer of 2016. We will continue to have U-Pick Blueberries. 

If your wondering where exactly we will be putting our U-Pick Strawberries in at, and if your familiar with our farm, you might have noticed that we have moved the majority of where we make our compost to a different section of our farm, and that field is now bare. This is where we will be putting our U-Pick Strawberries. It is right across from our U-Pick Blueberry field, how perfect?! 

Over the next year we have quite a bit of work to do, we need to prep our soil and get it up to our standards (it's already been certified organic since we made our certified organic compost there), and most importantly we need to plant the strawberry plants! We have already placed our order for the plants and we are happy to announce the variety we will have are Bentons. 

Benton strawberry plant is a Junebearing cultivar, named after Benton County where Oregon State University is located in Corvallis, Oregon.  Fruit is very bright, has excellent keeping quality, is conic in shape, and the has good flavor. Fruit is medium to large in size and is recommended for all parts of the Pacific Northwest. Benton appears to have excellent winter hardiness and excellent fruit quality with vigorous growth. 

The upright habit makes Benton a good bet for home gardeners as well as the commercial grower. It is more drought resistant than Rainier strawberry plants. Virus tolerant. Also tolerant to red stele. Ripens late.

As we make progress and go along on our new venture we will be posting photos and up dates, so keep your eye out for it all. It's sure to be exciting! 

We would like to thank all of our customers over the years for supporting our farm and all our additions we have added since 2006. Adding blackberries, raspberries, and strawberries was a risk, but meeting such a warm response has allowed us to make additional improvements and to grow as a farm. 

Summer Is Coming!

You might have see us starting to post more and more about this coming summer! We are very excited for this harvest season. For a while now we have been saying "Summer is Coming"

And it's true. In a few short weeks we will start harvest on our raspberries and they sort of kick off the season for us. We will be sending out post cards for those local folks who have opted in for them. These postcards are for announcement official announcement of what is going on for this summer.

Those of you who do not get our postcards, no worries, we will be announcing all major events/happenings here on our blog, on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest and (coming soon) Instagram, for all updates from around the farm! We would love for you to follow us on all our social media, but you can just pick the one you use most too.

Our next big announcement will be May 30, 2015 right here on our blog, so be sure to come back and check out what we have in store! 

It's going to be a great summer!

May 2015 News from Around The Farm

We finally got some much needed sunshine and we started putting in trellising into our planting of Black Raspberries. We have also been busy feeding all of our crops and helping them along their way to summer harvest. It’s really important to make sure our crops are being fed now and during harvest so that not only does the plant produce fruit but also that the plant can take care of itself. Whether that means putting energy towards growing, fending off diseases or however else that plant needs to do.   In April we also participated in a couple of community events. If you're interested in seeing photos from our adventures click here for Earth Day event and click here for Tyee’s Open House. Office Hours This is probably the last month we will be in our Winter hours (yay!) But until we say otherwise we will continue with our Winter Hours: Monday to Friday 10 am to 4 pm PST.

Frozen Raspberries Are Sold Out This is the first year since having raspberries that we have sold out of them. So we will not have that as an option on our website until we have this coming harvests berries are packed and ready. The good news is that we are currently guess-timating that our Raspberries will be coming on some time in June, so hopefully no one has to wait too long. Better Shipping Rates are Over Until Winter Thank you to everyone who has ordered over the last few months to cash in on those awesome shipping rates! The weather is getting warmer and that means we have to insist on shipping 2 day air again. When the weather starts getting cold again we will once again offer these better rates. Just because the better rates are gone does not mean we are out of frozen! We will continue to offer frozen berries as normal. Social Media Shenanigans We had such a great month interacting with you guys! If you missed it we have reactivated our Twitter account, and been posting far more to facebook,Pinterest, and our blog. This month on our blog we are focusing on Health Awareness. Today you will be able to find our post of what this means to us and some tips about what you can do to live healthier. Then every Saturday this month, you will be able to find delicious recipes that go along with this theme. Other posts we have coming up this month will be concerning summer activities for the farm and what you all can expect. Plus we will have a huge announcement about our strawberries! Our Pinterest board for May will be all about Mother’s Day, May Day, and Brunch! We are posting great recipes, beautiful images of wonderful bouquets, and fantastic ideas for gifts for Mother’s Day. Facebook & Twitter are great places to find out if we are attending any events, for example we didn’t know we would be attending the events we did in when we sent out April’s newsletter so we put it all over Facebook & Twitter. We also have been posting a ton of photos of this spring's bloom. As well as articles we run into and want to share with everyone! Post Card Reminders: Every year we send out postcards for reminders about our fresh season coming up. This year there will be a coupon attached to it so don’t loose it, and remember to bring it with you when you visit us! Usually when we send these out we are getting really close to our first berry being ready. Right now we anticipate sending them out at the end of May. Keep an eye on our social media for when we actually do. This year we will also be letting everyone know when we have U-Picks open as well as when each berry and variety we have is ready, via our social media, so it’s super important if you're not following us to do so. We don’t want you to miss anything! Coupons & Specials For Mother’s Day we do have a special going. For $17.99 (includes shipping) you can send your loved one a special gift that includes a Chocolate Blueberry Cluster and a 4 oz Dried Blueberry. We ship nation wide so its a great healthy gift! We also are extending our special in Willamette Living Magazine to the end of June. Raspberry & Lemon Curd Tarts Inspired From Cooks With Cocktails Ingredients: FOR THE LEMON CURD ½ cup lemon juice 1 tbsp lemon rind 4 egg yolk 1 whole egg 1 cup sugar ½ cup plus 2 tbsp butter FOR THE RASPBERRY CURD ½ cup raspberry juice 4 egg yolk 1 whole egg ¾ cup sugar ½ cup plus 2 tbsp butter FOR THE SHORTBREAD 1½ cup flour ½ cup cold butter ¾ cup sugar Icing sugar for dusting (optional) Directions: FOR THE LEMON CURD Put lemon juice, lemon rind, butter on a double boiler and heat till butter melts. Then take it off the heat. Beat eggs in a bowl till foamy with a whisk or on high speed in a mixer. Gradually add the sugar till eggs are pale and very thick. This should take about 4 - 5 mins. Put lemon mixture still in the double boiler back on the heat, add the egg mixture and whisk. Cook till it thickens. It should coat a wooden spoon well. Set aside. FOR THE RASPBERRY CURD Take a bag of frozen raspberry's and thaw. When completely thawed, blend up the raspberries, put in a strainer and strain till you get ½ a cup of juice. Put the raspberry juice, butter on double boiler and heat till butter melts then take off the heat. Beat eggs in a bowl till foamy with a whisk or on high speed in a mixer. Gradually add the sugar till eggs are pale and very thick. This should take about 4 - 5 mins. Put raspberry mixture still in the double boiler back on the heat, add the egg mixture and whisk. Cook till it thickens. It should coat a wooden spoon well. Set aside. FOR THE SHORTBREAD Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place all the ingredient in a food processor or mixer and mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for about ½ hour. Take it out of the fridge, divide into 12 equal size balls. Roll the dough ball between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. Place in the pan mould or tart shell. Place a piece of parchment over each shell and fill with pie weights. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 mins. Remove from the oven. Most likely the shell will have fallen a little it down the sides of the mould. You will have to use a deep spoon top push down the crust and move it up the side of the pan. A round table spoon works really well. Cool completely. TO ASSEMBLE Take a tart shell and fill it with lemon curd almost all the way to the top. Next place a layer of raspberry curd on top. Continue with the rest of the shells. Sprinkle with icing sugar if desired. Indulge...