It has been a busy couple of weeks! After having a stern talk with mother nature we were finally able to get the rest of the apple and pear trees planted. Marcus pointed out that we must be paying tribute to our past life in Pennsylvania with some of the varieties that we planted this year. For all those Penn State fans out there, Buffalo Ridge Orchard now has Nittany apple trees, which is a cross between Golden Delicious and the York apple. The York was always one of our favorites to purchase at our neighborhood farmers market in Overbrook. It’s somewhat flattened in shape, is very firm, and has a cidery flavor.
We also planted 40 Seckel pear trees, which is a sweet dessert pear that was discovered as a wild seedling in Philadelphia’s Roxborough neighborhood in the early 1800’s. Of course it is also likely that the pear was planted by German settlers and then later discovered. Either way hopefully in a couple years we will have a supply of pears from July to October. We were also able to get all of our onions planted – all five bushels of plants and two bushels of sets. We had hoped to plant the hoophouse tomatoes, but are grateful that we waited until after this last cold spell. Although we did not have snow, we did have 30 degree temperatures.
Mary and Vern got the potatoes planted as well. There were lots of herb seeds that got planted, 4 long beds of lettuces (with another 3 on their way), and lots of other loose ends have been tied up in getting ready for the summer markets, which started last week. So stop on by and see us at our summer markets; you can check out the link for our Farmer’s Market Calendar on the left to see when we’re scheduled to be at a market near you!