Harvest Festival at Mt. View Orchards

This weekend we are celebrating Harvest Festival on the farm. We are so grateful for the abundant crops we harvested this 2016 season. Thankfully we had a cherry crop after the 2015 lack there of. We are starting to harvest our cider apples and quince this week.  It smells amazing all over the orchard and inside our homes as well as we are frantically trying to keep up with with the dried fruit orders.  

My mother and I will make our annual applesauce cinnamon rolls for Saturday and Sunday and we still have plenty of apples for picking. Our pumpkin patch is also ready to go with many perfect pumpkins as well.  We are a grateful farmers and are so thankful for the end of our harvest season.

Many of the apples are truly at their prime and we still have a lot of fruit to pick because we had such an abundant crop.  The "Keepers" meaning the ones that keep for 4-6 months are fugis, Braeburns, Romes, Grannies, Pippens and Winesaps.  These can be kept in your garage, cellar, or your deck. You just don't want them to freeze. We are also selling cider bins for your pressing party.  

Adding champagne yeast and nutrient to another 260 gallon batch of Newtown pippen cider this week because I can hardly keep up with the demand of our golden row hard cider. thank you so much for the back up, my friends.

Farming our 3rd generation orchard connects me to those who were on this land before me and reminds me to be conscious of taking care of it for those who will come after. xoxo your grateful farmer, Trina

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Dried Fruit is Candy!

I love eating dried fruit and I love drying fruit.  There is nothing like the smell of dried cinnamon apples in your home that makes it smell like LOVE.  A dehydrator is an easy and cheap way to preserve summer/autumns local harvests for the colder months to come(if you don't eat them all in the first week!) Thats the real challenge I we have around here.  I have a friend of our farm that preserves plums, peaches, pears and apples and he reports his teenagers eat all the dried fruit in a night if he doesn't hide it. 

We use a large Cabelo food dehydrator and let them dry all night at 160 degrees(roughly 12 hours for apples/peaches/plums and 24 hours for pears). But I know many people use their ovens or a smaller dehydrator and that also works out great.  The smaller you slice the fruit the faster it is going to dry. We use the apple, peeler/corer to make the apple rings and then place them in dehydrator(for the cinnamon apples I coat in cinnamon and sugar) I do not use any chemicals, additives or preservatives.  All the dried fruit you buy in the store are covered in sulfites.  If you want to stop the amount of additives you are eating consider drying your own fruit. 

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My favorite fruits to dry are italian prune plums, peaches, cherries, apples and pears.  Come by the stand for a free sample of our fried fruit or to discuss drying fruit with myself or my mom.  When we I was a kid my mom used to also make homemade fruit leather.  That was such a treat growing up. So many fond memories eating dehydrated fruit as a kiddo on the farm. Dried fruit is Candy!  You are welcome to dry with the peelings on as well for more fiber but most children prefer no peeling.

October is the perfect season to turn your ovens on or food dehydrators.  Your home will smell absolutely amazing and will be so warm and cozy.  Our farm stand is open till the end of the month and then open for self serve.  I invite you to come by and pick up some local fruit that you can enjoy all year long. xoxo your grateful farmer, Trina

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Farming and Cider Making

As a long-time cider lover, cider-maker and farmer, I was not satisfied with ciders that were overly sweet and artificial. I wanted to make cider the way my great-grandparents would have enjoyed in back in the motherland. This inspired a quest to learn how to make an additive-free cider that tasted like apples.

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Golden Row cider is made from nothing but apples from Mt. View’s row of 100-year-old apple trees. Each cider blend starts with a base of apples fresh-pressed on site in a small-craft cidery to achieve a balance of sweetness, tartness, and dryness that everyone loves. After fermentation, the cider is back-sweetened with more fresh-pressed apple juice. Along with having no extra sugar, Golden Row is naturally gluten free. 

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Visitors to Mt. View can now enjoy samples of Golden Row at the cidery, take home growlers from the fruit stand, or order kegs for their special event, restaurant, or wedding. Come by soon and try a free sample friends. Cheers! xo your grateful farmer Trina

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