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Events and Updates

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  • Autumn…

    Autumn…

    GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling;

    Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard;

    ~Walt Whitman

    Apples..and pumpkins…and craft tour oh my!

    We are busily harvesting our apples, clearing out the last of the winter squash in the garden, and buttoning up our greenhouses after the first frosts of the season. And, preparing for the Valley Craft Network Studio Tour https://www.valleycraftnetwork.org Celebrating the 42nd year!

    The Middletown and Pleasant Valley areas are home to a wealth of professional artisans. Our tour is free and open to the public. The weekend before Thanksgiving, November 18 & 19th, 10am-5pm.

    Willow Oaks is hosting two amazing artists this year. Contentment Turnings, wood turnings, Dave Swiger, https://contentmentturnings.com And Focal Pointers, photographers Leigh Scott & Mark Cohen, https://www.focalpointers.com


  • Summertime

    Summertime

    and the livin’ is steamy!

    We’ve been busy picking loads of berries! Blueberries, blackberries, currants. All available in our farmstand, Saturdays and Sundays, 11-5. If you can’t make it on the weekend just send us a chirp and we’ll be happy to get an order together for you to pick up on another day.

    sun rise at Willow Oaks
    sun rise

    Aggie, grey dog, and Ginny, our little sweet potato (not pictured), have been helping us patrol the orchard. Too bad they’re not as great at scaring away fire blight as they are at chasing off groundhogs!

    Aggie, a gray Willow Oaks farm dog, on patrol
    Aggie on patrol

  • Musings from the barrel room – March 2023

    Musings from the barrel room – March 2023

    The March winds howl – over 65 mph last week and the blow lasted for over 24 hours. Thankfully, only 40-45 mph most of the time. Dogs, cats, cows, bees, and people all huddled out of the wind. We even stopped pruning – no way to be on a ladder in those gusts. Even so, many fruit buds are still swelling as the weather warms. Looks like everything will bloom almost 3 weeks early this year. Wonder how that will affect harvest time. Guess that also will depend on rainfall and May/June temperatures. We will keep you posted.

    Enough complaining, right?? 

    On the plus side, we are “sugaring-off” in our second annual “syruping” this month – maple and walnut syrups in the works. About 100 folks came by on the first chilly weekend to see “the old and new” methods of “sugaring-off” as friends Taylor, Alex, Joanne, and Rob joined us to cook. Our effort is a 3-farm collaboration (with Fox Haven and Two Goats) to demonstrate how the process works, answer questions, encourage people to try making syrup on their own, and offer folks an opportunity to purchase the products when finished by the end of the month. Some sap boiled over wood in a barrel and other sap steamed in stainless evaporator heated by propane. After the weekend of cooking, the maple smells and tastes of caramel while the walnut offers a sweet nutty flavor. The maple requires about 40 gallons of sap for a gallon of syrup while the walnut needs about 60 gallons of sap for that same gallon. The erratic late winter weather has rendered our sap harvest sketchier this year, but we still should make enough syrup to fill orders with some left over for sale and experimentation in cocktail construction, a new and soon-to-occur event in the tasting room.

    We have baby calves!!! Yes, tiny black and white lumps lying the newly greening grass. Last week a big low-pressure system blew through followed by full moon and suddenly there are 3 new babies – two heifers and a bull-now-steer. And two of the babies are to first-time moms; all are doing well and lots of bonding has been going on. The new Moms figured it out in a hurry – Mother Nature is amazing. 

    Belties – Linda Harrison-Parsons

    Planting chard, kale and choi into beds and transplanting more figs, strawberries, blueberries, lilacs, blackberries, and tomatoes into larger pots as we prepare for the season. We will have lots of plants available in April. Grafting apples and pears in the next 2 weeks as we continue making over a few trees into better cider and eating varieties. We will have some fruit trees available as well.

    Our tasting room is open for the season as of last weekend. Our new whiskey-barrel-aged ciders and our new Stayman cider are ready for a try. Each is a dry, light, bright, and distinctive cider. I suspect several will bring us metals in competitions. We invite you to visit on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in the near future!!!

    Saturday and Sunday 11am-5pm