Our Story
We specialize in unusual organic fruit production, including black mulberry saplings and mulberry fruit products. We can make apple and pear cider, fruit jellies, jams, bread fillings, and pie fillings. We also grow organic walnuts, gooseberries, figs, persimmons, grapes, and vine berries. Our honey bees, bumble bees, and mason bees pollinate for us and we have honey as a sweetener byproduct, available in small quantities.
The Story of Mulberry Orchard
In the year 2000 Neal and ELee found the land for their next adventure. Thirteen acres, forested and meadowed, with ponds -- this place had potential. We purchased the land and added small fruit trees to the 1 pear, 1 plum, 1 walnut, 1 quince, and 7 apple trees that had survived from the days of the old house that had burned down. Each small tree -- apricots, peaches, cherries, nectarines -- was surrounded by a ring of fencing to protect it individually from the deer. Later, an 8'-high fence was put in to surround about 2 acres of garden and orchard, and the small tree rings were removed. Permanent raised vegetable beds were installed and a bed of asparagus and one of rhubarb were started. We added grapes, kiwis, currents, gooseberries, persimmon, raspberries, blueberries, and YES, a couple of mulberries. Since those early days, some fruits thrived and others were removed, but each year the fruit and vegetable garden gets better.
The Old Mulberry
Down the road a piece -- not on our land -- is a very old mulberry tree. Rumor has it that this tree was planted over 100 years ago by the grandfather of an elderly neighbor. It has thumb-sized positively delicious mulberries. On a tree! No thorns! With permission, we've picked them every year -- picked till the juice runs red down our arms and sides. I go home with my pans of berries, feeling a bit like an ax murderer, covered in juice. And yes, it washes out.... We make jam and pies and cobbler.... Nothing else is like that wonderful flavor. And every year we have tried to reproduce that ancient tree, so as to not lose the genetics of these berries. But that's another story.