We now have Rubyprince (yellow) and Manon (white) peaches.  Early next week we will start picking Silver Gem nectarines, a white low acid nectarine.  In 7-10 days we will start picking the donut peaches.  U-Pick blackberries (Triple Crown) will start Monday.  The heat is hard on them and you will have to pick around the sunburned berries to get the good ones.  We will have some prepicked blackberries as soon as the heat moderates.  The heat has done in our raspberry crop so U-Pick raspberries are done until Mid August when the fall raspberries start.  When it gets this hot it is basically survival mode, we work hard to keep everything watered.  The heat is great for the peaches they are sweet and the quality is excellent. 

We just picked our Manon peaches.  This is a white low acid, very sweet peach, developed in France.   We think it tastes very good.  In the next 7-10 days we will be picking Ruby Prince, a yellow peach with a traditional peach flavor.  The heat is hard on the raspberries, we will have prepicked for about a week and u-pick for a little longer.  We will then have a break in the raspberries until mid-August when the Caroline raspberries start up.  Fro there we should have raspberries into early October.   The Triple Crown blackberries will start in about 2 weeks depending on the weather.  Stop by for a free sample of the peach of the week.

Today we picked Earlystar Peaches, a early yellow peach.  It is a peach with the classic flavor.  It is a clingstone and has good flavor for an early peach.  Friday we will start picking Manon.  We are excited about this peach. It is a low acid white peach, so it tastes very sweet.  We are open 7-5 Monday - Saturday.  If you arrive in the morning and no one is up at the berry barn ring the bell,  we are probably picking.

U-pick raspberry season is here.  The berries are big and the weather is cooperating to give us a good start.  The patch is open  6AM to 3Pm Monday - Saturday.  If the weather cooperates we will be picking this patch for the month of July, we will have a short break in early August and then start the fall raspberries from Mid-August through October.  We also have pre-picked peaches for sale and will soon have some plumcots.  We should have peaches and pluots/plumcots available for the next 3 months.  We look forward to seeing you

We have started a new project on the farm.  For those of you who visited our farm in 2013 you saw that the berry barn was not finished.  We have just started wiring the barn.  The meter socket and the disconnects are mounted on the side of the barn.  Lenny, the Oregon state electrical inspector and Larry from Pacific Power have both been invaluable in answering questions about how the wiring should be done to be safe and meet the electrical code.  We hope to have the barn wired in the next several months.  When the wiring and plumbing is all done, we will have a much larger cooler and a freezer so that we will have frozen berries available when we do not have fresh berries.  With the new kitchen we will be able to explore making jellies, jams and other fruit products.

We will be planting two new raspberry varieties this spring.  Tulamagic and Cowichan.  Tulamagic is a variety from Switzerland.  It is a cross between Tulameen and Autumn Bliss.  It is an early variety that should give us raspberries starting in late June.  Cowichan is a variety developed in British Columbia.  It is supposed to handle the heat better than many varieties.  We hope this variety will provide good quality berries when we have a hot summer.

We are also planting 2 new blackberry varieties : Boysenberry and Newberry.  Many of you will know of the Boysenberry.  This is believed to be a blackberry raspberry cross developed by Rudolph Boysen in California. He later abandoned this berry.  Walter Knott,  of Knott's Berry Farm, heard of this berry and eventually found several vines struggling to survive in a field of weeds.  He took them to his farm and started growing them, so that we can enjoy them today.
The Newberry is also a blackberry/raspberry cross developed by Oregon State
 and the USDA.  It has Marion berry and Boysenberry in its pedigree.  It also is about 1 month earlier than Triple Crown blackberry.  These are berries that are grown in California and Western Oregon-Washington and we do not know how they will do in our climate, but we have high hopes for them.

To all of our customers we look forward to seeing you this coming summer and we  wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year.

Well, another season is in the books.  We had a challenging year.  With the diverse weather we were never able to get into a rhythm with our berries.  Also, the midsummer heat damaged about 1/2 of the berry crop.  We had small crop of Apricots, Peaches, Nectarines, Plums and Pluots.  This spring was the first for our wind machine, we use this to protect the tender fruit blossoms on frosty spring nights.  It was not working as well as we hoped so I did some work with the motor and it now will do a better job of protecting the entire orchard.  We planted a new field of Caroline and Prelude raspberries and they should produce well in 2014.  We are excited about our new addition to the orchard, we planted cherries this year.  With the varieties we planted we should have them available mid-June through Mid-,uly.  We expect our first crop in 2015.  We are still finishing the berry barn and it should be completely done by spring.  It has been a long time since the last blog, some of that was the difficult summer, some was not making the time and some was having 2 hip replacement surgeries in the last year.  The joke is that I may need to change my name from FarmerGreg to the BionicFarmer.  We certainly enjoyed meeting all of you who picked berries or bought prepicked berries or fruit, it is one of the high points of the summer.  Next year we hope to have more berries and fruit available for you over more of the summer.  Thank you for following us and have a berry nice winter.

FarmerGreg

It has been a long time since I have posted and I apologize.  This winter and spring have been very busy.  We are constructing a berry barn and planting a new large raspberry patch.  Berry season is here!  PYO raspberries will start Saturday and will be Saturdays and Wednesdays.  Pre-picked raspberries will be available starting Monday, June 25.  email us or call the berry line to be placed on the berry list and reserve your berries.  When you come this year, you will see the new red Berry Barn.  We will be selling out of it this year.  However, it is not done inside so please bear with us.  We think when it is done it will make things much nicer for everyone.  We also are faced with a potentially very serious insect pest called spotted wing drosophila.  If this pest turns out to be as damaging as they say it may be it will make growing all soft fruits,(berries, peaches plums) much more difficult in our valley.  We will provide more information about this as the summer goes on.  Here are some pictures of the construction of our Berry Barn.  We are grateful for the good job that Kralman steel structures did in constructing our barn, especially Joe the foreman of the crew.  He made sure that everything was done right.  We look forward to seeing you and giving you a tour of the Berry Barn.