This year has been an interesting one.  With the frigid winter weather and the cool wet spring it seems more like Minnesota than Milton Freewater.  Our raspberries will be later this year, staring late June to the first of July.  We will be starting u-pick peaches and pluots this year but with the cold winter the crop is pretty light.  The white tailed deer have wreaked havoc with our young cherry and plum trees, forcing us to build a deer fence around the orchard. The fence is taking a lot more time and money than I could imagine.  The Hardy Kiwi's are growing well and starting fill in some of the spaces on the trellis.  We are in the process of removing the old barn so we can put up a large greenhouse.  Stop by, pick some fruit and see the changes.

With the early spring and the warm summer our berry harvest was accelerated by approximately 3-4 weeks.  This means that the picking is very slow.  We have also had a family emergency today.  This means that our season is over for 2016.  We want to thank you for visiting our website, reading the blog and purchasing our fruit.  We look forward to seeing you in June 2017.

The Caroline raspberries are ready for picking now that the temperatures have moderated.  We will be open Friday (9-2), Saturday (9-3) and  Monday (Labor Day).  This weekend, we will be open from 8 am to 4 pm. For the rest of September, our scheduled days open will be Sat. Sept 10, Tues Sept 13, Sat. Sept 17,   Tues Sept 20,  Sat Sept 24 and Tues Sept 27.

PYO Blackberries start 7-18.  The crop is moderately light because of the cold last fall.  With the cooler weather the quality is very good.  We have prepicked donut peaches also.  The Caroline raspberries should be ready for PYO around the first of August.  We are making headway on our Berry Barn.  The inside is sheetrocked and painted and we are working on getting our big new cooler ready.  We would love to show it off if anyone is interested.

Well, so far this summer has been a complete bust for raspberries.  The high 90's to 100's are cooking the raspberries on the vine.  We do not have anything to pick at all.  It is going to take 3-6 days below 95 before we will have anything to pick.  We feel very bad about this but there is just nothing we can do about the weather.  When (If?) the weather cools we will have a notice on the website and on the Berryline (541-938-5053) about when picking will open.  Today we worked with the sheetrockers as they are working on the 
Berry Barn, it was nice and toasty.  Peaches should be starting in the next week.  Stay cool.

We have about 3-4 weeks of fruit left this year.  We Just picked our Victoria peaches and Flavor Heart Pluots.  In 7-10 days we will be picking Flavorich our latest pluot.  In another week after that we should be picking September Snow and Autumn Prince our last two peaches.  U-pick raspberries should be avaiable until we get a frost.  The raspberries are getting bigger as the weather cools off.  We just got done planting our Pacific Gold mustard that we will use to biofumigate our fields that we will be planting next spring.  If you get a chance stop by we would love to see you.  We are on our fall hours, Edie is back to school, so we are open Tuesday and Saturdays 7-4.

With the cooler temperatures the blackberries are doing great.  They are big and sweet.  U-Pick blackberries will be available for about the next month.  Best Picking will be in the next 2 weeks.  For those who want prepicked blackberries we are taking order from now until August 1.  Next week we will have donut peaches available.