North Star Orchard

A few shots of CSA members, farm tours, and fabulous food taken over the past few years.

Thanks go to Becky, Rodney, Paul, and Lisa for all the photos!

CSA Member Elizabeth S. enjoyed playing with her food in 2010!
Here’s a short film of all the amazing creations she made with her weekly Veggie and Fruit CSA share.
Awesome!!

When mid-May hits, a flurry of activity begins in the orchard. It’s fruit thinning season!

Remember all those gorgeous blooms of spring? Well, almost every one of those blooms sets a baby fruit…and there are just too many on each tree. From the tree’s perspective, this is a good thing. Since it’s just aiming to reproduce, the more potential seeds the better. From the perspective of a fruit eater, however, there’s just too many fruits on a tree. The development of excellent flavor is dependent upon the balance of the fruit load and the energy a tree can put into it. For nearly all fruit trees, we have to thin off quite a number of baby fruits, so the tree can put its energies (and sugars!) into the fruits that remain.

Apple, peach, and plum thinning can go relatively quickly (although in the case of plums, it can take an entire day to thin one single tree!). But thinning Asian pears is what takes up most of our time in the orchard during thinning season – both because we have so many trees and they set so many little fruits! One of our helpers a few years ago took it upon herself to count how many pears she cut off a single full-grown Hosui Asian pear tree, and the result was right around 2000! That’s 2000 individual cuts per tree to get the job done. (quite frankly, Mo, I’m not sure I really wanted to know that!)

Time flies by though – most of us listen to ipods or other listening gizmos. Once you know what you’re doing, the task isn’t too hard and it’s nice to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks while working. Personally, I get a lot of ‘reading’ done during thinning season – cool!

Fruit thinning season finishes up (hopefully!) by mid- to late July.

I just love the West Chester Growers’ Market!
The market was the first producer-only farmers’ market in this area of PA. Its first year was 1995, and we were one of the founding members.
While there are a bunch of markets everywhere now, I’ll always have a warm spot in my heart for the WCGM….you always remember your first!
I hope you enjoy the video….