We also still have apples in the market, including the all popular Honeycrisp Apples. There are lots of 2nd apples and snow days are perfect for making apple sauce with the kids. We have frozen cherries in the market and they are available for shipping. Call us at 1-877-937-5464 to get daily updates on what we have in the market or to order your frozen cherries.
To learn more about shipping frozen cherries watch our frozen cherry video  frozen cherry shipping

Alisha

Here’s the background on turkey manure in orchards. We have it delivered in the gravel trains with wood extensions on the sides to pile it high. Each load weighs about 100,000 lb of just manure. At 5,000 lbs per acre a load will do twenty acres of fruit trees.  In the tart cherry orchards we are trying to apply 100 lbs per year of nitrogen. The manure is nice because it is “slow release” and the nitrogen is available to the roots for quite a few months. The fruit trees love it and they look great. Besides the smell there is another drawback. The turkey pooh is high in phosphorous which is a pollutant at higher levels. The fruit trees need phosphorous but they use it at a slower rate so it might build up in the soil. We soil test every year and when the phosphorous has built up to the upper level we will have to quit with the turkey pooh.

From a food safety standpoint manure in general has been attracting negative attention. We apply all of the manure in the fall so that it has had plenty of time to break down in the soil before any fruit crops are on the trees.  In the end it is a win win deal for the cherry orchards and the turkey farms, and to our neighbors who are inconvenienced by the smell we appreciate your patience. Thank you

John

I had been lobbying Jim for a few months to buy a new Orchard tractor. Any more I don’t spend many hours in the tractor seat but I do still plant the sweet corn, pumpkins, and squash. Jim was slow to warm up to the idea but this fall the 1976 John Deere 2030 which I bought with the farm 31 years ago started knocking and smoking. We had used this tractor as our primary cherry harvester puller, orchard mower, and weed spray tractor. The motor had been rebuilt once already.  So I knew Jim would have to allow a new purchase, (unless e fixed the JD2030 again).  Then another of our old workhorse tractors, the 1978 John Deere 2640, quit moving too. Something wrong with the hydraulics.

It is very expensive to fix these old diesels. We put $5,500.oo into one a few years ago and the value when fixed is still only $7,500-8,000. Both of these old John Deeres needed tires too which are now over $1,200 for a pair.  These 1970s John Deeres were very good tractors. The hydraulics were ahead of the rest of the pack and they used a hydraulic hi-lo to turn an 8 speed into a 16 speed. The brakes were always better than the competitions too.

John Deere has closed a lot of dealers, so the dealer is now about 85 miles from here. We have a dealer that we deal with who sells Kubota and New Holland much closer so that swung the deal.  New Holland has the style of tractor that we want for cherry orchards so we were able to buy a “new” tractor with some demo hours on it at a savings. This New Holland T4050 is  90 hp, 4wheel drive with a cab and air conditioning. It will pull the planter straighter across hillsides, it won’t bog down as much(the old tractors were 60-70hp two wheel drive) and the operator is protected from the elements when mowing the tart cherry trees. This style tractor is small enough to go between the rows in sweet cherry and tart cherry orchards without damaging hanging fruit. (it is still too big for close planted apples).

I was a little nostalgic to see the first tractor that I ever bought leaving the farm. I had paid $7,000 in 1980 and if it ran I could still get about $7,000. I doubt that the new tractors will hold their value like the old one did.

John

Click to view the AARP Magazine article

Along with apples, squash is coming in by the truckloads! We have Butternut, Buttercup, Acorn, Hubbard, and Carnival right now. They are available by the piece and 1/2 bushel. There are lots of ways to cook squash, so start experimenting and give us your input!

Halloween is coming up quickly, so be sure to get out to the orchard to pick out a pumpkin! We have pumpkins of all shapes and sizes outside the markets so there are lots of choices!

If you don’t feel like whipping up your own apple pie, grab a fresh baked pie at one of the markets. We also have hand dipped caramel apples to put you in the fall mood.

It is definitely starting to look and feel like fall around the markets so stop out and join in all the fall fun!

Cherry juice concentrate has been growing at a fast pace and now the market was being shorted. We were unable to get a commitment for the amount of concentrate we need for the coming year from the processor who had done 100% of our juice for the last 2 years. We responded by sending all of the tart cherries that we grow to be concentrated. We also put out the word that we needed cherries for concentrate to the other growers. We were able to get 10 growers in our area to send us fruit for concentrate. However, in order to influence growers to send us their fruit we had to match or surpass the grower price that they were being offered from the big processors, and because the crop was short the prices were up 50% to 100% over the prices offered for the last several years.  No one has ever paid prices this high for juice cherries but we think we were able to get enough fruit to last until next July when we start all over again. I hope you will bear with us and that we have a big cherry crop next year.

John