Winter Wonder: Why We Love Loquats!

Meet one of the coolest trees around... the lovely loquat, Eriobotrya japonica, a true Tree for All Seasons! What makes it so special? Well, for starters, it blooms right now. The dark of winter — December, January — when few, if any, plants are in flower. But the Loquat ignores all Common Sense ...

... and bursts out in full bloom, much to the delight of the honeybees! (If you look closely at the photo above, you can see a bee carrying her pollen stash on her legs.)

One thing a photo can't capture is the fragrance... heady, sweet but never cloying, a trace of vanilla... it's unlike anything else, and I look forward to it all year. It has a marvelous way of drifting, traveling with the breeze and drawing you — and the bees — straight to the source!

The small, cream-coloured flowers aren't overly showy, but the trees themselves have a lush, almost tropical beauty: foot-long, vividly green leaves, shiny on the tops and fuzzy underneath. As a tot, I would make loquat "shoes" every summer by tying the biggest leaves I could find to the soles of my feet with strips of grass. Come to think of it, when the weather warms up I just might make another pair; one can never be too old for Loquat Shoes!

And, of course, there's the fruit — golden orange, sweet-tart, and filled with five or six giant, mahogany-brown seeds. Really, they contain far more seed than fruit, but we did make a tasty loquat marmalade one year...

... and the seeds themselves are worth saving, as they are easy to sprout if you'd like a loquat tree of your own! Just dry them for a week or so, then plant at a depth of about 1/2 inch in gallon pots, and keep moist but well-drained until they sprout. We usually have a few extras growing to give to beekeeper friends:

For such a showy tree, loquats are really quite well-behaved — no invasive roots or shoots, little raking or pruning required, tolerant of cold and heat, drought and frost. And, for the little care they do ask for, you'll be rewarded all year long with luxuriant shade, tasty fruit and that splendid winter perfume! What more could you ask for than a loquat tree in your yard?

P.S. If you'd like some seeds to grow your own tree, just drop us a note! — bhranch @ gmail . com

Making Olives — Part Two

Being Greek, our family has made olives for generations. I have vivid memories of sitting in the wine cellar on chilly winter evenings, dunking into Papu's gigantic ceramic crock with a long-handled ladle; fishing out briny, bright-green and scrumptious homemade olives, and (occasionally) eating so many as to spoil my appetite for dinner. Water-cured olives (see previous post) are a bit simpler to make, but lye-cured olives have a particularly rich, almost buttery flavor that make them well worth the extra effort. And, really, it's a much shorter process than the weeks of soaking-and-draining necessary for water-curing; you'll just need to set aside a day or so when you can tend your olives every few hours.

In the olden days, everyone around here would use Lewis Lye for making olives. Nowadays — at our local hardware store, anyhow — our friend Lewis has been replaced by a product with the rather alarming name of "Rooto." It's sold as a drain cleaner, and costs three or four dollars a bottle (plenty for several batches of olives.) Just make sure whatever kind you buy clearly specifies "100% Lye" or "sodium hydroxide" on the label. If it doesn't, or if there are any other ingredients in the product, don't buy it; go to another store and try again. Look for lye in crystal form — liquid or flakes may measure differently and throw off the recipe.

It goes against everything your mother, grandmother, and kindergarten teacher ever taught you to put something called "Rooto" — found in the drain-cleaner section of the hardware store — in (or even near) your food, and, yes, you should use caution here. Lye is nasty stuff, as the riot of warnings on the label will inform you. Read those, okay? Make sure that you only use glass, plastic, stainless steel, ceramic, or wooden containers and utensils for this project, as some metals can react with lye to produce hydrogen gas or poison your olives. It's also highly corrosive, and can cause serious burns to skin. Treat it like bleach, and act accordingly: don't touch it with bare hands, and if you are accident-prone, wear goggles and gloves to be safe. A short list of things that should be kept far away from lye:

• Aluminum, tin, and galvanized metal containers and utensils
• Skin and eyes
• Food (other than the olives, of course)
• Children
• Pets
• Clothing
• Anything you really value

All that being said, there's really nothing to be afraid of when it comes to making lye-cured olives. Just use common sense and caution in handling the lye, and follow the directions, and you'll be just fine. All the lye gets washed out of the olives by the time you finish them, so they are quite safe to eat — and you'll be in good company with the Scandinavians and their lutefisk, or the Native Americans and their hominy, or even the Germans with their pretzels... (hey, olives aren't the only food you can make with lye! Just don't get carried away with the experiments.)

You'll need mature green olives for this recipe. To make sure olives are ready to be picked, give one a squeeze; a milky white juice should show. A tree will usually have olives of various stages of ripeness on the same branch, so if there are some red or black fruits on the tree, their greener neighbours are probably mature enough to be picked.

Olive trees are often planted for their looks; these are the trees that spangle the sidewalk with smashed purple fruits come autumn. The next time you spot an olive tree heavy with fruit, ask its owners if you might pick a bucket or two — chances are, they would be only too thrilled if you would please take the entire crop, far, far away, and do with them whatever you like, just get those foul little things out of our yard... so, of course you must now call all your friends and have yourselves an olive-making party!

Lye-Cured Green Olives

That gigantic olive crock has gotten a little too cracked and pitted from so many years of lye and salt (not to mention age itself), so this year I'm using a five-gallon food-grade plastic bucket instead... it works just as well, even if it isn't quite so nice, and will do the trick until I can find another crock (ideas, anyone?) Whatever your container, fill it about half full of olives — in this case, about 2 1/2 gallons of fruit.

This is a combination of my grandfather's and uncle's recipes for lye-cured olives. The lye soak takes anywhere from eight to twelve hours or longer, so plan carefully when you will start it. If you put your olives in to cure at 9 in the morning, they should be ready to rinse before bedtime; if you start them in the afternoon, you may be up all night checking them. After you have done a few batches and have an idea of what to expect, you could start them in the evening, let them soak overnight, and rinse them in the morning. Be sure to set up near a garden hose with household water, away from plants or lawns, preferably on gravel or pavement that you don't mind getting a bit stained temporarily (the lye darkens everything it touches, but this should eventually wash away.)

ingredients and supplies:
• Mature green olives (once again, even size and ripeness is important; you want them all to finish curing at the same time)
• 2/3 cup lye (100% pure)
• 2 1/4 gallons cold water
• Two ceramic, glass, or plastic containers — five gallons is a good manageable size — one for olives, the other to mix lye and brine in
• Lid for container, or piece of plywood or similar to cover
• Wooden, plastic, or stainless steel long-handled spoon and tongs
• Old washcloth or other small piece of fabric (white or undyed; colors may leach)
• Colander (plastic or stainless)
• Rubber gloves (and goggles if you like)
• Garden hose with household/potable water
• Stainless steel knife

Rinse and drain the olives; place them in the bucket you want to make them in. Pour 2 1/4 gallons cold water into your mixing bucket, and sprinkle the lye over the surface. Use the long-handled spoon to mix well, being careful not to splash. The lye will sink to the bottom and form a crust; be sure to scrape this up and dissolve it thoroughly into the water.

The lye will heat the water as it dissolves; if you start with very cold water, it won't be too warm for the olives (you don't want to cook them.) If the outside of the bucket feels warm, check the temperature — it's OK if the mixture is below 70°. Otherwise, allow it to cool before proceeding.

Pour the lye solution over the olives and stir. If you have extra lye solution left, pour it down a household drain — never near plants or down a storm drain.

For the first hour, stir the olives every fifteen minutes to prevent them from blistering in the lye. After that, stir every hour or two. Cover the surface with a washcloth or other piece of fabric; this will keep the olives from darkening with air contact. (Use the tongs to position the cloth.)

After about four hours, fish out one of the olives with your spoon, rinse it well, and slice it open to the pit. You'll notice a ring of yellow-green flesh around the outside, while the inside will be a creamy white. The yellow area is where the lye has penetrated, while the white has not yet been reached — eventually, you want the entire inside to be yellow. Check a couple olives again after six hours, and continue to check every hour after that.

The yellow areas will darken to brown with air exposure, making it easier to see how deeply the lye has penetrated. The olive on the left has been in the solution for four hours, while the one on the far right is almost finished, after nine hours. This batch of olives took about 9 1/2 hours total to soak; when the olives start to sink, instead of float, you'll know they are almost done.

As soon as the olives are completely yellow inside — check three or four of different sizes — carefully pour off the lye solution, wearing rubber gloves. (We covered the top of the bucket with a large colander and inverted the entire thing.) Rinse several times with clean water, until the water is no longer brownish.

Now that the lye has leached the bitterness out of the olives, you'll need to leach out the lye. This can take several days to a week, depending on your method and the size of the olives. We stick a garden hose all the way to the bottom of the bucket, set it on a slow trickle, and place the bucket lid or a piece of wood ajar on top to keep out leaves and curious critters. If you don't want to leave your water running, you could also just fill the bucket with water and then change the water several times a day; this method may take a bit longer. Either way, give them a stir once in a while, and slice into an olive occasionally after a day or so to see if it still feels soapy or slippery inside.

When the water no longer looks brownish, yellowish, or pinkish — after at least several days — slice open an olive and carefully taste it. When you can no longer detect any lye (it has a soapy taste), drain the olives and mix the brine:

Fill your mixing bucket with water — as much as you used to mix the lye, in this case 2 1/4 gallons — and add salt, stirring to dissolve thoroughly, until an egg (unboiled) floats in the brine, with a dime-size area of shell showing above the surface. Pour brine over olives and allow to set for at least several days before eating; you may wish to rinse the olives or soak them for a few hours in water to remove some of the salt before eating them. They may be portioned into pint mason jars and marinated with oil, vinegar, and/or whatever herbs you like — my uncle John makes fantastic olives with garlic and lemon, and oregano or thyme, or even chilies would also be delicious. Keep marinated olives in the refrigerator; your regular olives may be stored, in brine, for months in the fridge or even just in a cool place. (If the olives in brine start to feel a bit "slimy," drain them and add a new batch of brine; the olives are good as long as they remain firm in texture.)

* * *

Making lye-cured olives isn't scary or dangerous or even all that complicated — it just takes a bit of caution and patience, and the results are well worth every bit of work that goes into them! The UC Extension publication "Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling" has plenty of information on lye-curing olives, including safety tips and instructions for canning or freezing your olives. It can be downloaded for free here: http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/Olives/8267.aspx

Making Olives — Part One

Ever tasted a fresh-picked olive? If so, you know that olives are one of those magical foods that undergo a complete transformation on the way from tree to table — the briny, deeply-flavored, tasty little morsels we love to snack on bear little resemblance to their bitter, astringent cousins on the branch except in that they are green (or purple) and grape-shaped. I always imagine the delight with which some primitive Mediterranean fellow must have discovered that the olives bobbing around in the sea tasted a whole lot better than those horrid little fruits on the tree nearby!

There are a variety of methods for curing olives, ranging from simple (i.e., toss them in the sea) to complicated indeed. Our olive trees are laden this year, so we'll be making several kinds of olives: water-cured, lye-cured, and salt-cured... and, of course, sharing the methods with you here...

The simplest, and quite possibly the oldest, method of curing olives involves soaking them in water to draw out the bitterness — a similar technique to the one the Native Americans in our area used to render acorns palatable. Breaking the olive's skin allows the water to penetrate and wash out the astringency more quickly; it's a bit time-consuming, but the result will be a much tastier olive, so it's worth your while. And the work goes quickly if you round up a few pals to help — it's one of those pleasantly mindless activities, like shelling beans or polishing apples, that are well-suited to conversation and daydreaming!

This recipe is adapted from the UC Extension publication "Olives: Safe Methods for Home Pickling." You can download the complete document at anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu (highly recommended, with a nice variety of methods for curing olives.)

Water-Cured Olives, Kalamata style

This is a good place to start — a simple method, adaptable to any amount, large or small. You'll need olives that are ripe but firm; ours are fairly red with a greenish tinge, but you could use riper ones too, as long as they aren't soft (be sure to check them over for worms!) Uniformity is important when making olives: pick fruits that are fairly even in size and ripeness for the best results. A gallon or two is a good amount to start with.

ingredients and supplies:
• Firm-ripe olives (light to dark red)
• Water — plenty of it!
• Pickling salt
• Red wine vinegar
• Olive oil
• Sharp knife or razor blade
• One-gallon glass jars, or other similar glass or plastic containers
• Extra jar or bucket for mixing brine

Rinse and drain the olives. With knife or razor blade, make two or three lengthwise cuts on each olive, on opposite sides of the fruit, to pit depth. (These olives were fairly large, so we made three slices; smaller olives would only need two.)

Place the olives in the jars or your containers of choice, and fill with cool water. Place a small saucer, wooden disc, or a plastic bag filled with water on the surface to keep the olives submerged — too much air exposure will turn them dark. Soak for 24 hours, then drain and cover again with water.

Change the water once or twice daily. After about a week, taste the olives to check for bitterness; continue to taste every day or so until the olives are no longer bitter. (It may take up to three weeks to remove all the bitterness.)

To make the brine: Mix one pound (1 1/2 c) pickling salt with 1 gallon cool water. Stir to dissolve, then add 1 quart (4 c) vinegar; pour mixture over drained olives. (Note: this will make enough brine for 10 lbs of olives; you can increase or decrease the amounts to suit your needs.)

Drizzle about 1/2 inch olive oil over surface, close container firmly, and store at 60-80° for about 1 month before eating. The olives may be stored this way for up to a year.

* * *

If slicing each olive sounds like too much work, you can also make cracked water-cured olives: start with green olives rather than red, and give each fruit a whack with a mallet, rolling pin, rock, or other similar device. You want to crack the skin and meat, but not mash the fruit. Proceed as above, replacing the red wine vinegar with 2 cups white wine vinegar. Pour brine over drained olives and refrigerate. Let the olives soak in the brine for at least four days before eating; keep these ones in the fridge, where they will also last for up to a year (provided you don't eat them all up immediately!)

Happy pickling!

Fresh From The Garden: Zucchini Gratin

Finally — a way to use all that zucchini! (And, no, we're not talking about zucchini bread that only takes a squash or two; this will use a whole basket full!)


This recipe is adapted from Richard Olney's Simple French Food (which, incidentally, has a considerable section devoted to zucchini.) Flip through the "vegetables" chapter and you will come to a delightful revelation: just about anything can be made into a gratin, and furthermore, once gratinéed, it will be absolutely delicious. Case in point: the infamous zucchini, staple of summer gardens, the very definition of overabundance. No matter how many (or few) seeds you plant, there always seems to come a point where the zucchini far outnumber the willing zucchini-eaters ... cue the recipes for zucchini bread, zucchini pancakes, zucchini chocolate cake, et cetera...

... or just find a little parsley and garlic, some cheese, a couple of eggs, and a handful of other ingredients and cook up a scrumptious gratin — perfectly simple, perfectly summer!


Zucchini Gratin (Gratin de Courgettes)

2 - 1/2 lbs small zucchini, sliced coin-thin (we use a mandoline for this)
4 Tb olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 c bread crumbs
About 1/4 c milk
2 eggs
4 cloves garlic, pressed or finely chopped
One small bunch parsley, chopped
8 ounces cheese — Gruyere, Jack, or a mixture
2 Tb butter

Toss the zucchini with olive oil in a large skillet over high heat — I do this in two batches — until limp and just barely starting to brown, about 7 minutes. (As you heat the zucchini, it will release water; toss gently until most of the liquid is evaporated.) Season with salt and pepper to taste.


While zucchini cooks, mix together bread crumbs, milk, eggs, garlic, and parsley in a large bowl. Add zucchini and cheese; toss to coat evenly. (Add a little extra milk if it looks too dry — the mixture should be moist but not soupy.) If you like, reserve about 1/3 c cheese to sprinkle over the top.

Pour into a buttered gratin dish; top with dots of butter and, if you like, the remaining cheese. Bake at 400° for about 25 minutes, or until browned and bubbly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

We brought this to the marvelous Placer County Slow Food pot luck picnic earlier today — what a fantastic array of homemade foods and local ingredients!

Honey Harvest Time

Way to go, bees! We just harvested 150 pounds of honey from our hives — more photos and the details of the process forthcoming (when we're not too sticky to type...) And, yes, we'll be at the local Farmer's Markets soon with scrumptious B H Ranch honey for sale!

The Perfect Peach Tart

It's always a race to see who gets to the peaches first — the birds, or us. This year, we were feeling particularly protective of our small crop, as a late frost took just about all our stone fruit; a handful of peaches looked like all we'd get. To our surprise, as the peaches started to ripen and turn to a more obvious and easy-to-spot color, we were thrilled to see that we'd actually have a decent, albeit smallish, crop of peaches this year — enough to make some jam, and this simple, scrumptious rustic tart. I love love love this recipe because it's so simple — flour, sugar, butter, peaches. All you need. Of course, when you're working with so few ingredients, they all should be the best you can find... especially the peaches. Make sure they're fragrant, fresh, and ripe but ripe!

These peaches came from a tree that my grandfather started from a peach-pit! The little sprout is now a tremendous tree, and it makes some of the best and prettiest peaches I've tasted. When storing peaches, remember to set them on their stem ends, with their pointy blossom ends facing up; they'll keep better that way.

OK, now for the recipe!:

B H Ranch Rustic Peach Tart

For the crust:

1 1/4 c flour
1 stick (1/2 c) salted butter (or unsalted butter plus a generous pinch of salt)
1/2 tsp sugar
about 1/4 c vodka + ice water *

*Trust me on this one! It sounds weird, but it works. Fill half a 1/4 c measure with vodka; top it off with ice water, and proceed as usual with your recipe. Too much water allows gluten chains to form and toughens the dough, but the vodka — being alcohol, not water — lets you add extra liquid to the dough without toughening it. It's magic — perfect pastry every time. Cooks Illustrated Magazine ran an article on this technique several years ago in their December issue, and I've used it ever since. You can apply the same trick to any pie-crust recipe; just swap out half the water for vodka. The alcohol evaporates during baking, but if you'd rather skip the vodka, you can go ahead and use all ice water; just be careful not to over-mix.

For the filling:

2 lbs peaches, preferably freestone, peeled and sliced
2 Tb sugar
1 Tb flour
1 Tb butter

Place flour and sugar in food processor; pulse to blend. (You can also use a pastry cutter for this recipe if you prefer.) Add butter in 1/2" chunks; pulse until the mixture becomes a coarse meal with plenty of butter chunks visible. Sprinkle the water/vodka mixture over the dough and mix (carefully, just barely) until the liquid is evenly distributed. (You may need to add slightly more than 1/4 c. The dough should look chunky, kind of like cottage cheese.) Place dough on a sheet of plastic wrap; shape into a flat circle, wrap, and chill for about an hour (can be made in advance).

Make the filling: place sliced peaches in a bowl; gently toss with flour and sugar.

Roll out the dough between sheets of waxed paper, making a circle a little larger that 12 inches in diameter. Transfer the dough to a sheet of parchment paper and place on a baking sheet — I use a small pizza pan — preferably something with a rim, in case it gets a little juicy while baking.

Pile the peaches in the centre of the dough circle, and gently lift and fold the edges of the dough over the filling. Pinch the dough to seal and hold it in place. Dot the peaches with bits of butter. Use your fingers to dab a bit of water on the pastry, and sprinkle with sugar.


Bake the tart at 375 degrees for about half an hour, until the crust is golden and the peaches are tender. I like to sprinkle a little extra sugar over the hot peaches as soon as I remove the tart from the oven; the sugar melts and forms a pretty glaze. Serve the tart warm, preferably with whipped cream or ice cream!

Reasons To Love Summer — And to Quit Complaining About the Heat!

Well, it's hot. Finally. Really hot. The usual California strategy of coping with the scorching summer — reminding one another that, "well, at least it's a dry heat" — is now more often than not being met with an exasperated, "yes, but it's still too darn hot!" The air conditioner is getting a workout, but there's still plenty to do outside... so, after a week of hundred-degree-plus days, it's time for a cheerful reminder of why we love summer. With any luck, it'll inspire you — and us — to head back outdoors and soak up the best of the season!

1. Everything's growing! The garden has gone from this...

to this...

...in a month and a half!

2. Blackberries! (More on those soon.)

3. Bastille Day (and of course the Fourth of July too) — the perfect occasion for a picnic with plenty of fresh produce. Plus aïoli and pyrotechnics!

4. Fresh herbs galore... which means some scrumptious pesto!

5. Timmy, our handsome rooster, is molting. It's just too funny watching him strut around, trying to maintain some shred of dignity with only two of his magnificent tail-feathers left. (Sorry, Tim — we know this isn't helping!)

6. Washing the car seems like less of a chore and more like a pleasant activity. (...on the other had, though, mucking out the chicken coop seems less like a chore and more like a form of torture. Of course, the girls find it all quite entertaining to watch:)

7. Should we need to raise a small army, I'm pretty sure we could feed it quite well on zucchini for the rest of the summer. (Check back soon for a scrummy zucchini gratin recipe.)

8. Farmer's market season is in full swing!

9. The peaches are ripe — which means peach jam, peach tarts, peaches straight off the tree...

10. And finally, one word: Tomatoes!!

Up Close — Baby Bees!

...well, sort of. They're actually full-grown when they hatch, but they're darn cute anyway!
These are drone (male) bees — you can tell by the domed covers on the unopened cells. Above, two bees are chewing their way through the wax covers on the cells.

This guy's almost out! If you look closely, you can see a varroa mite on his back — the little orange-brown dot. There are also a few mites visible on the surface of the honeycomb. Not good. The female mites lay their eggs in the cells along with the bee larvae; when the bees hatch out, so do the mites. Beekeeping would be a whole lot easier without those nasty little guys... but we're hoping that our colonies are strong enough to withstand the attacks. Wish them luck!

New Kids On The Farm

This has been quite a year for baby birds — especially bluebirds, which is wonderful! We watched these guys from the beginning...

(note the chicken feathers in the nest!)





...and finally, this brave little guy was the first to venture out into the Wide World Beyond:

Propagation Time: Fig Trees!

Around here, we love figs. Fresh, dried, straight from the tree — you can never have too many! We recently went to the California Rare Fruit Grower's grafting exchange (an absolute wonderland for tree geeks!) and picked up, among other things, a handful of unusual fig varieties. If you have a favorite fig tree, or know someone who might be willing to share a few twigs, propagating cuttings is an easy way to grow your own tree — but don't stop with figs! This same method can be used with apples, grapes, and more...

...but figs, we've found, are one of the easiest trees to propagate. Start with clean, straight twigs, about a foot long, taken from a tree's new growth — the dark, smooth branches, not the rough gray ones. Make sure your cutting has plenty of buds; these will be the points at which the twig takes root. You'll also need pots and dirt. (We're using one- and five-gallon plastic pots filled with fresh potting soil. Clean, new dirt reduces chances of disease, and good drainage is important; you could use compost or garden soil, but we'd rather not take chances!) Have a pair of clippers handy, and another stick for digging holes.

Begin by filling your pots with soil and trimming your twigs to wherever the buds are densest — most of ours are about 8 to 10 inches long. Again, the buds will sprout the roots, so you want as many as possible in contact with the soil. You can watch this sprouting process, if you like, by placing a spare twig in a jar of water and setting it on a window sill for a couple weeks; when the white roots start to emerge and grow, go ahead and plant the twig.

Use a stick to "drill" the holes in your pot of soil. One-gallon pots are good for one twig, while a five-gallon pot will hold two or three and will need watering less frequently. (A good thing — rooting cuttings need regular water in order to "take".) Place the cutting several inches deep in the hole, enough to cover at least two or three buds, and press the soil down firmly. And if you're planting more than one variety, don't forget to label them!

Finally, give your cuttings a good watering and place the pots somewhere sunny and warm to take root. Ours will be residing in the greenhouse:


Here's a fig tree we started from a cutting a couple years ago. As you can see, it's a far cry from the little twigs we're planting today — but with any luck, they'll do just as well!

Introducing the B H Ranch

Welcome to the Boorinakis Harper Ranch! We have been talking about starting a blog for a while, and as winter is a (relatively) slow time of year here on the ranch, it seemed like the perfect time to take the plunge. We'll be posting updates on seasonal goings-on about the farm, as well as plenty of photos, recipes using seasonal local produce, gardening and farming how-to's, and stories about the process of going completely organic with our pear orchard. And, of course, our flock of charming chickens will surely make regular appearances... starting now!

the gals (and guy)

My great-grandfather, George Boorinakis, started our farm in 1918. Now, eighty years later, we're keeping the family business alive and thriving — and we're still growing the most delicious pears you've ever tasted!

George Boorinakis

The Boorinakis Harper Ranch is a small family owned and operated business, and we are passionate about keeping it that way. We're committed to incorporating sustainable farming practices wherever possible — watch for details in upcoming blog posts — including integrated pest management and low-spray techniques to minimize our environmental impact, and keeping bees to pollinate our crops. And, since we’re local, our produce is never transported over long distances or kept in cold storage. Our goal is to provide our community with a local source for the freshest, tastiest fruits and vegetables around!

Even though it isn't our main crop season, there's plenty happening on the ranch in winter. This is the time of year for propagating fruit trees from cuttings, for planning the summer garden, and for pruning, pruning, pruning:



...because before you know it, the orchard will look like this!


-julia boorinakis-harper