Apples

There is still time to sign-up for our CSA

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We have just five weeks before we deliver our first CSA share of fresh veggies and apples! So, if you haven't signed up yet, what are you waiting for? Sign-up is available online (click to CSA Information in the side menu). Or, if you prefer, you can print the sign-up form and send it to us via mail - we love getting mail from our customers!

Emma's Reasons to Sign-up

Why sign-up for our CSA? The number one reason we find that our customers sign-up for our CSA is to encourage healthy eating while supporting a local business. We also try to offer our best variety of vegetables and apples to our CSA customers at a discount compared with our market retail prices. We feel that if you are willing to make the commitment to 12 weeks of produce, we can give you a price break. Another reason you should sign-up with Buffalo Ridge Orchard is that you are able to chose your selection of apples and veggies each week at pick up. This means if you don't like broccoli, rather than let it deteriorate in your refrigerator, you can choose to pick-up more of certain items as a replacement. Likewise, you are able to pick your mix of apples each week. If you love Honeycrisp while they are in season, you can just get Honeycrisp. Also, it helps us to reduce overall waste. We know exactly how much produce to bring each week for our CSA shares, without the excess that may not sell at our weekly market locations.

Lots of Options this Year!

This year we are offering lots of options for share size and pick-up locations for both our Apple share and Apple-Veggie CSA shares. Every year we make a goal to expand our CSA shares and this year is no exception. We are now offering an Apple share at Abbe Hills Farm outside of Mount Vernon. We will also have two drop locations in Cedar Rapids to help make pick-up more convenient. We will also continue to have pick-ups available at the Dubuque and Iowa City Farmer's Markets.

Hope to see you soon at market or at our CSA pick-up!

Emma

Seasonal Positions Available!

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DSC_3802_4x6We are currently looking for two part-time seasonal workers from late August to mid-October.  Workers will be harvesting and packing apples and other produce.  Workers must be motivated, have attention to detail, be able to lift 50 lbs, and available to work week days.  Expected work schedule will be 15-25 hours per week, typically on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays.  The position will be compensated at $8.50  to $10/hour.  If interested, please email your prior work experience and references to BuffaloRidgeOrchard@gmail.com.

2016 CSA Sign-Up Now Available

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Once again the days are getting brighter, and longer, and we’re starting to think of warmth and sun and vegetables and apples!  Marcus and Emma have already finished pruning the pear trees and have made good progress in the apple orchard.  Vern has been busy planting the movable high tunnels and Mary is busy in the greenhouse.  We all are still enjoying the last of our apples and root crops.  This is the perfect time to sign up for one our 2016 CSA shares.  This year, in addition to our Veggie-Apple combination share, we are also offering an Apple-only share – both of which you can sign-up for online.

The Veggie-Apple CSA share will provide a great mix of fresh seasonal vegetables, such as peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, herbs, and fresh greens in August; kale, cabbage, chard, garlic, tomatoes, herbs, winter squash, peppers, and potatoes in September; and fall greens, herbs, winter squash, pie pumpkins, and potatoes in October.  All of these great veggies will be paired with a number of apple varieties as they ripen throughout the fall season.  Click the button below to sign-up for either share, or click here for more information.

CSA Contact Form & Wait List   

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We found this box last year – need we say more?

Our new Apple share is an easy way to get your weekly supply of apples, or as an add-on to one of our Veggie-Apple shares (for families wanting more apples each week).  Just like our Veggie-Apple share, the apple varieties will change throughout the season as they’re harvested ripe out of the orchard.  Click the button above to sign-up, or click here for more information.

 

Summer Apples and Veggies Official Kick-off

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DSC_3644_4x6It is that time of year when we truly appreciate growing, selling, and more importantly eating locally produced food.  Tomatoes are always more delicious than we remembered and cucumbers are a cool and refreshing contrast to the heat of late July.  In contrast eggplant, zucchini, new potatoes, and beets give us comfort and satisfaction.  We take delight in the sweet and sprightly early apple as we eat our first Pristine apple.  Not far behind we start enjoying Redfree and Dandee Red apples which provide a hint of the beloved fall Jonathan and McIntosh, while still reigning over summer with their straighforward flavor.

Pristine apples are an apple that always initially knocks us off our feet with its juiciness.  It requires much care in harvest and packing to prevent bruising and of course it has a tendency to drop off the tree at a concerning rate making us cringe whenever there is a breezy day on the farm.  However this extra care is rewarded with an apple that packs a powerful sweet tart punch.

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Redfree apple is preview of the future fall Jonathan apple and the name references it’s red color and somewhat disease resistance.  A much better name for this apple is early-Jon because it truly is a crunchy tart apple with a hint of sweetness.

Dandee Red is such a great early apple with its firm dense texture and tart flavor.  We often compare the flavor of the Dandee Red to a McIntosh but without the snap – this description grossly underestimates how wonderful this apple is on the tastebuds.  The firm dense finely grained texture has a creaminess missing from the fall McIntosh.

Milestones Big and Small

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Success! Emma graciously accepts the Rhubarb Torch Award for the “Most Tangy [some say Bitter] During Bloom.”  She is hoping for thicker skin next year.  Photo provided by the talented Jessica Rilling.
This year marks several milestones big and small.  Mary and Vern have been farming for close to 40 years.  This will be the tenth season of apple trees in production on the farm.   And coincidentally, tomorrow Marcus and Emma will be celebrating ten years of marriage.  So how is this year shaping up on this adventure called farming?

After several cool nights that made us all have heartburn over the apple crop this spring, we find ourselves wondering why we volunteered to be in the boxing ring with Mother Nature.  We had flashbacks to 2012, when we lost close to 100 percent of our crop due to an early bloom, followed by what were seasonably low temperatures for early April.  Over the past few weeks we surveyed blossoms and estimated fruit set.  In a typical year we thin the fruit down by 50 to 60 percent to ensure a return bloom for next year and for fruit size.  However, there are plenty of other variables that can affect fruit set, including cloud cover, temperature, and pollination.  This year we estimated that 4o percent of blossoms would set fruit, which would essentially be close to a normal crop.

Funny how a few weeks can change your outlook on life and growing year.  The apple crop looks strong, the potato spuds emerged, we started the market season well, and we are almost done planting our vegetable fields.  We are already happily complaining about all the fruit thinning we need to do in the orchard.

I am not sure how Vern and Mary have survived 40 years of farming, except that they seem to have a skill that I think you only obtain after years of practice – adaptability!  Things do not always go as planned – actually that is the only thing you can plan for.  But if you are good at observing cycles and can anticipate changes that need to be made, you’ll be able to sleep most nights.

 

BRO Weather Station

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Last week our friend Jessica Rilling stopped by and took some really happy bright pictures around the farm on what was otherwise a grey and dreary day.

It has been a busy couple of weeks out at the farm.  The orchard is nearing the end of bloom and we started selling our spring greens and herb plants at farmers markets on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

After several late nights and early mornings waiting for calmer, rain free weather in order to spray blossom protectant on the apple and pear orchard, we are pretty exhausted.  However, we are thankful that we decided this year to invest in a new weather station which allows us to keep track of weather forecast and run models for orchard diseases and pest pressure online.  Basically, we are able to make more accurate decisions on when the orchard needs to be sprayed and justify having a smart phone.

Customers often ask if we use organic practices in our orchard.  It is hard to answer this question with a yes or no answer.  We do use several organic practices such as keeping the understory clean to reduce scab innoculum from overwintering.  We use traps to monitor pest pressure and spray only when it is necessary.   We consistently prune the orchard in order to improve airflow and reduce diseases.  And we plant habitat that encourages beneficial insects.  Still even with all of these methods we still find that we need to use conventional sprays to manage our biggest problem, Apple Scab, which thrives in our wet, humid weather in Iowa.  Our primary goal in the orchard is to reduce our use of any spray (conventional or organic) by using an arsenal of tools; one of which is accurate weather information!  If we have to spray, we are spraying more accurately during the most critical times, which in most cases means we are having to spray less often.  If you are curious what the weather is doing out at the orchard, check out the link below:

Buffalo Ridge Orchard Weather Station Page

Local Food Champions

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A small assortment of apples available in September at Buffalo Ridge Orchard. Photo taken by Jessica Rilling.
Just a small assortment of the apples available in September at Buffalo Ridge Orchard, including Liberty, Blondee, Crimson Gold, Arlet, and Honeycrisp. Photo by Jessica Rilling.

We’re really fortunate to work with some super great folks here in Eastern Iowa.  And while we like to think of all of our customers as champions of local food, it’s tough for all of them to get credit for supporting our local farming community.  Last month the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture posted profiles of nine local food champions in coordination with the Regional Food Systems Working Group, including two of our wholesale customers that have regularly purchased apples and vegetables from us over the past couple of years now.  All of the profiles can be reviewed here, but we’re especially happy to note the profiles of Pam Oldham & Andy Deutmeyer at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids and Miles Breed & Steve Neese at Clarke University in Dubuque.

We are so glad to be working with these folks, as well as our other dedicated customers!  To all of the local food champions out there seeking high-quality, locally-grown produce; we thoroughly appreciate your interest in providing an outlet for our efforts.  Here’s to striving even further in 2015 to build a strong community of local food champions throughout Iowa and beyond!

Monday morning on the Orchard

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Our morning assessment of five different varieties for ripeness. From left to right we are looking at Fortune, Smoothee, Liberty, Empire, and Crimson Gold.

During apple picking season at the beginning of each week we end up spending the early hours of the morning tasting the upcoming apple varieties in order to establish our pick schedule for the rest of the week.  We start by first cutting each apple in half and looking at the seeds.  Dark brown seeds are one indication that the apple is close to ripe.  Then we taste the apple to see if the texture and taste is ripe.  An unripe apple can have somewhat of a chalky texture.  A few varieties actually have a spongy texture when they are under ripe and then firm up when they are ripe.  Of course flavor plays a huge part on whether we think the apple is ready for picking.

This week we will finish picking the last few Sweet Sixteen and start picking Snowsweet, Smoothee, and Chieftain.  We will also continue to pick Jonagold and Valstar.   Smoothee is our first late season golden that we will be picking and it has all the great attributes of a good golden apple including its honeyed pear flavor.

How do we harvest 3,200 apple trees?

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Emma harvesting Sweet Sixteen
Emma harvesting Sweet Sixteen

…By hand.  As Emma is showing in the picture above, each apple is picked, one by one and placed in our pick baskets.  Once our baskets are full, we take them by wagon to our washing station.  Then we wash, sort, and pack the apples into tubs so that they can be stacked and stored in our walk-in cooler.

So, assuming an average apple might weigh a half pound (which might be considered a bit of an understatement by anyone who’s seen our Zestar!, Honeycrisp, or Candycrisp), that ends up being somewhere between 70 to 80,000 individual apples each carefully picked, packed, and stacked to bring to our customers at markets in Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Iowa City, and Marion.

This week we’re just reaching the peak of our apple harvest for this year.  We’ve been busy picking Honeycrisp, Sweet Sixteen, Gala, Fuji, Cortland, Jonagold, Jonafree, Senshu, Arlet (aka Swiss Gourmet), Valstar, and Crimson Crisp.  We’ll harvest more than 40 varieties of apples before frost sets in by late October.  With so many to choose from, it can be hard to pick a favorite.  But we’ve each got our own, hopefully we’ve got at least one that can be your favorite too!

Piles of Potatoes

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A pile of Dark Red Norlands
A pile of Dark Red Norlands

This year has been a fantastic potato growing year with record yields.  It looks like we will have close to three times the quantity of potatoes that we had last year.  The past couple of weeks Vern and Mary have been working hard to harvest close to 2,000 pounds of potatoes every week.  During these weeks we found ourselves cursing the extra work caused by the timely rains this Spring that provided the ultimate growing conditions for our spuds.

Finally we realized that we were complaining about success.  As one of our farmer friends from Pennsylvania stated several years back, “you have to make sure your attitude doesn’t get too farmerish!”  So this week we had to press the reset button on our attitude as we march full force into apple season with only half the potatoes harvested.  What a blessing that we have piles of potatoes!

And apple season is really starting to kick off as well; our fall varieties are finally coming on in full force!  After a bit of a meager showing last week, we’ve already harvested McIntosh, Sweet Sixteen, Jonafree, Honeycrisp, and Gala apples (and it’s only Wednesday morning).  So we’ll have all of those at market this week, plus the last of our Silkens.

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