The Lykosh Hay Ride
On Friday, I went to an orchard with Dana and Kelly, two Sonlighters in driving distance (Dana is an hour away, Kelly is two). The orchard is about a 45 minute drive from our place, and it was so encouraging for me. They have about eleven acres planted with “thousands” of trees, but it is just a man, his wife, and a young girl they hire (I think). And the man is a PE teacher at the local school, so it isn’t even full time work. I think that was encouraging to me because Phil is really less interested in fruit than I am; he would rather be doing grass-based something (at this point, I think that would be Jersey cows, sheep, and pigs. Not goats). I came away thinking that we could do multiple enterprises, not because we have to, in a mad scramble to survive, but because we GET to, enjoying all the various things we choose to do.
I was also encouraged because it looks like they’ve planted at different times, growing as their customer base grows. And they have a good business selling drops: we bought a bushel of apples for $5, because we picked them up off the ground. They aren’t ideal, but they are overall good. And since I’ve never gotten more than about 5 pounds of apples for $5 (and often only about 2 pounds), to get 40 pounds seems like ridiculous riches. They had few drops available, though, because people come weekly and get apples for their pigs. And people come and pick, for $17/bushel. They pay no harvesting costs, don’t have to leave the farm.
Oh! And they have NO irrigation! I had budgeted (sort of) drip lines and ponds and stuff. But I am now hoping that we won’t need it! Marvelous!
I bought one each of four types of apples (they were $1.50/pound), and with the two types we had picked up, we had a taste test of six types. It was very helpful. I had heard good things about Ginger Gold (they are greenish-yellow, with darker green spots), but I have now had them from two orchards, and they are watery and tasteless—blech! Almost bad enough to want to spit out. I’m thankful now that the nursery was out of them. We had a green Crispin apple which was almost the size of grapefruit. I think that is too big to eat comfortably as a snack. It had good texture, but not much flavor. Better than the Ginger Gold. I wasn’t sad that we didn’t order them. Fuji here were not as big as in the stores, but we liked the one we had a good deal. On first bite, I thought it was almost floral, like lavender, with maybe a pear overtone. Cummins Nursery, where I ordered my trees, was out of them, but I might try to find some Fuji to plant. I do have on order Jonagold, which was just now ripe. I think the texture is good, the flavor is a good; I wouldn’t say it is my favorite, but it is a decent eating apple. And Gala was always my favorite of the Costco organic apples. We picked up many grounders, and they were past their prime and a bit mushy, but flavor-wise, they were good, if a bit small. I’m not sure how Costco gets theirs to the size they do, but these were probably half the size. I was reading that most commercial orchards have a hard time making money with Gala—they are too small, and so require a lot more work than, say, Crispin.
Honeycrisp was the surprise. I’ve liked them in the grocery stores, and I know that people rave about the Honeycrisp, but I had read that they are not good beyond Zone 5. Well, here I am in Zone 7, and I don’t want to raise substandard fruit! But we universally liked it the most. Jadon was firm in his opinion. I’ll add them to my order, if the nursery still has any. Yum.
On our return from the orchard, we found Phil chopping down saplings. We want to get the goats into some of the brush that rings our clearing, but he needed to clear a place for us to see where we can put them. Soon after, we went to clean up at the Bessettes, then made a quick stop at an organic feed store (Countryside Natural Products). I loved it. It had organic dog food and livestock feed. It had Coir, the trendy new “peat moss” like product, made of coconut husks (a renewable resource, unlike peat moss, which is being harvested unsustainably). It had natural wormers and kelp and quality minerals to feed animals. Rachel Bush said that her chickens didn’t smell bad when eating their feed; how amazing that would be, because the chickens we’ve kept, and the chickens we’ve smelled, are all pretty stinky!.
For dinner, we tried out Five Guys (Burgers and Fries), a chain that we hoped would be like In-N-Out. They had articles and quotes all over their walls, declaring how great their food was. We thought it was mediocre—at best. I guess that shows, more than anything, just how top quality the meat we’ve had over the last few years has been. Rather than eat their “best $5 hamburger,” we’ll happily stick with our $5/pound hamburger from the local grassfed people (in this case, the Bessettes). Much, much better eating.
Then we took Phil to see the Frontier Culture Museum, during their final free night of the year. The blacksmith was at work, and we watched him make several nails. It was neat to see.
All in all, I was in the car for over four hours on Friday, but it was a fun day. (We’ve been listening to the Adventures in Odyssey tapes that we recorded off the radio many years ago. I surprise myself with how many lines I remember. I used to laugh because they were funny. Now, many of them make me cry; I think I resonate with the harder things they discuss more now that I’m an adult.)
No comments:
Post a Comment