Chronicles of the Long Shot Farm

Fruit

Ode to the Blackberry Patch

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There is a natural order to things. A progression that life, land, nay, even civilation itself must traverse. Things are born, they grow, then they must pass away. Such is the world we have.

And like all things of this world, our beloved patch of blackberry also went through the inevitable development: wrestled back from the wild, converted into productive farm land, thus yielding bountiful berries. But then the disease set in, and drought, and floods. We fought with ingenuity, with science. We fought with sweat and toil. We pruned and picked. But alas, it succombed to the fate of all our land: from beautiful rows of delicious brambles, to a parking lot.

We loved you blackberry patch. We will miss you. You taught us much, and now we park our trucks on you. But beneath the gravel, we also buried a piece of our hearts.

Posted by Duff Neill and Anja Weyant

Blueberry Time

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The blueberry harvest is in full swing.  The blueberry patch features several varieties of plants and is just next to the barn.  From the Winery deck you can view the patch. We added shiny metallic tape as a bird deterrent this year and the harvest is significantly larger.  Fortunately Anja’s family is in town and Rachel’s children were game to make some headway on the patch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Anja Weyant

Strawberry Wine

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We are excited to start a batch of strawberry wine! Fruit wines typically take less than a year to complete. We purchased locally enough strawberries to make a small batch of wine.  The wine will have a pleasant perfumey bouquet and the taste of strawberries will come out cleanly. Dry or sweet this wine will be something to look forward to.

Posted by Anja Weyant

Pressing Apples

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We were fortunate to get 2 bins of apples, including Gala and Yellow Delicious this past week.  This was a bit more than we had anticipated, about 75 bushels and luckily we had lots of helper this weekend!
We used our antique apple press  (literally over 100 years old, but upgraded with an electric motor) to shred the apples, which were captured in food grade, sanitized buckets. Though the old apple press can be used for pressing, the capacity is so small that it would have taken us days to get this done.
For pressing, we use our wine basket press instead.  And just as we would with grapes, we added rice hulls to the shredded apples, to increase the efficiency of juice extraction without the danger of pressing stems or seeds.It took all afternoon and late into evening before we had them all processed.
It made a lot of cider!