Mt View Orchard Fruit Stand

Ever since I moved back home to operate my families small farm, Mt. View Orchards I have been staying up late scheming of ways to get the word out to more people how special our farm truly is. There are a lot of options on the Hood River County Fruit Loop for people to visit, but I want to propose that Mt View Orchards Fruit stand is the friendliest, most affordable, delicious and welcoming farm to everyone who comes and visits.  We pride ourselves in being a warm and inviting farm where we open up our orchard like a large living room and let everyone enjoy our land with generous hospitality in our hearts. I have always believed that driving East through the Columbia River Gorge out to Mount Hood-Parkdale, Oregon is one of the most beautiful drives there is in the whole world.  Making the trip our to our Orchard is as beautiful as it is tasty. We are so blessed with faithful and loyal customers that come multiple times a year but we could always use more friends of our farm. I am so excited to announce that this weekend a dear from or mine made a small video for all to share about what it is like visiting Mt. View Orchards.  Mt. View Orchards isn't like any fruit stand you will find on the Hood River County Fruit Loop and I want to you come and experience what I am talking about. I also have a favor to ask of you all if you would be so kind….. If you know and love our Orchard, would you be willing to share this video with your friends and family who also enjoy farm fresh fruit who maybe do not know about us yet? We would love to be their farmers. We would be honored to be one of their favorite places to visit each year. Our farm, is our your farm and it is the perfect time of year to come up for apple picking. 

Love your grateful farmer.

An Apple or Pear a day!

October is the best time of year to come apple and pear picking at Mt. View Orchards! Good news just in time for the fall harvest of apples and pears: It turns out that eating one of those fruits a day may help prevent stroke. A new, large Dutch study of  20,000 adults ages 20 to 65 found that eating a white-fleshed fruit, like an apple or a pear, daily is associated with a lower risk of stroke.  

Most Americans don't get enough fiber each day to meet their nutritional requirements. It's recommended that women get at least 25 grams of fiber per day on a 2,000 calorie diet -- or to be more precise, 14 grams of fiber per 1,000 calories consumed. Men are recommended to get 38 grams. However, the average American only gets about 15 grams daily. Twenty-five grams is actually at the low end of what your optimal fiber intake, so there's no reason not to aim higher. So back to that apple: How does an apple measure up in terms of fiber? Eating just one apple a day (skin on) will give you an average of 4.4 grams of fiber, about one-fifth of your daily need.

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And apples and pears don't have just any old fiber, they are a rich source of a particularly powerful kind called pectin. It's what's used as a gelling agent to make jams and jellies, and in our stomach it can delay stomach emptying through a similar mechanism. Researchers at UCLA showed that by swapping in pectin for regular fiber, they could double the time it took subjects' stomachs to empty from about 1 hour to 2 hours, which meant subjects felt full that much longer. And in another study published in the journal Nutrition, scientists found that instructing participants to eat an apple or a pear before meals resulted in significant weight loss.

The participants were told, in effect, to eat more food, to add the fruit on top of their regular diets, and what happened is that the fruit crowded out less healthy choices, they ended up eating fewer calories overall, and they started shedding pounds.

While singing the praises of the humble apple, though, I would be remiss not to mention the extraordinary health benefits associated with eating them. It seems the old adage, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" just may hold truer than we knew.

A major review published in 2008 out of the German Cancer Research Center found that indeed, compared with those who eat less than an apple a day, those who eat one or more had less risk of oral cancer, cancer of the voice box, breast cancer, and colon, kidney, and ovarian cancer as well.

This makes sense given new research from Cornell showing that apple peels have potent antioxidant and growth-blocking effects on human breast cancer cells examined in a petri dish, and the higher the apple concentration, the fewer the cancer cells. And apples seem to work best against estrogen-receptor-negative breast cancer, which is much harder to treat than the receptor-positive kind.

How do apples do what they do?

There are three stages of tumor formation. Carcinogens cause the initial DNA mutations (the initiation stage), and then oxidation, inflammation, and hormones cause it to grow (the promotion stage); finally, metastasis occurs, in which the cancer spreads throughout the body. Which steps have apples been found to block? All of them. Apples not only have antimutagenic, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory effects, but they may even enhance our immune systems to help clear out any budding tumors before they get their start.

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We grow over 50 different types of apples and 20 different types of pears at Mt. View Orchards, It is an absolutely beautiful time to come and visit the Orchard and stock up on our finest.  There is no comparison to a tree ripened fruit that you have have picked yourself. If you're rooting around for something to eat, consider reaching for an apple or pear and usually by the time you're finished eating it, your hunger will have been sidelined; it's crowding out at its best! Have it in the midmorning, in the afternoon, or before a meal; it's entirely up to you. But before the day's end, do eat an apple or pear.  Any kind will do. You might just be pleasantly surprised at how the weight starts coming off and your health begins to soar! Come apple picking this weekend and start losing weight this fall. In all of my 37 years I have not grown tired of apples and pears, I always lose weight each autumn and for this I am a grateful farmer.

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Butter lover

I am happy to announce that we have officially completed harvesting our 2014 winter pears at Mt. View Orchards. This was one of my first harvests apprenticing my parents and I confess the learning curve has been quite high in my new role and the relief I feel now that all the pears are in the barn is tremendous.  My father predicted that our amazing employees would pick around 750 bins(1,100lbs) of D'anjou pears from our healthy older trees and we brought exactly that amount in. Nice prediction Papi! Our winter pears this year are big, beautiful and clean and we are feeling incredibly grateful for such wonderful providence. Everything that is out of control as farmers seemed to line up for growing amazing looking pears and we are full of thanksgiving for this much needed "win" on our farm. We still have quite a few of our later sweet apples to harvest for the farm stand and cider making but after 3 solid weeks of pear harvesting we are all feeling a little weary from the long days of endless work.  I woke up yesterday morning to the sound of steady rain on the top of my cozy camper trailer and it was music to my ears.  

The rain came and offered us a much needed intermission between harvesting pears and apples. Our trees were quite thirsty and needed some hydration and our bodies were tired needed some much needed rest. The sound of rain made me look upwards and exclaim, "Oh thank you." Colder fall weather is an answer to my prayers because I love turning on the oven and slow cooking squash, making soups and making slow cooked spicy pear butter each and every year. I have missed my Farmhouse Kitchen and today is the day for us to be reunited again. I have been saying for some time this month to my friends, "bring on the soups and sweater weather of fall," especially on ninety degree days.  Its hard to be a farmer when its hot outside.

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To celebrate our first rainy day of Autumn on the farm I decided that I would fill my crock pot with Ripe Bartlett pears and my favorite spices to make some Swiss Pear Butter. In case you didn't know I want to confess that I am a fan of all things called, "butter." Total Butter Lover!  Growing up with a dairy cow named, "Alice," made me rather ruined for anything but farm fresh butter on the farm.  If you haven't made your own butter from freshly raw milk then you may not know what I am talking about and I suggest you look into this STAT if you too love, Butter! Alice  was sure a patient and generous cow to let all us kids learn the art of milking on her and I am so grateful for this rare gift. In my mind Butter is its own food group but I also really enjoy fruit butters such as peach, apple, pumpkin pear butters. Pear Butter cooking in my crock pot with amazing spices fills my house with my absolute favorite smells of fall reminding me that there really is no place like HOME! I want to invite you to check out the Farm Kitchen page of my blog and you will find a recipe for my families Pear Butter.

We have ripe Bartlett pears for days up on the farm and they are looking for good homes.  Consider coming on up to our small family farm(link of a map) and pick up some ripe pears.  Cooking your food slowly is one of the best ways to draw out its own natural sweetness, fully and completely marry its ingredients and to fill your home with the magical aromas of autumn. Making pear butter is one of my favorite fall traditions and this year I want to share our Swiss family recipe forward with you all. This pear butter is silky smooth and requires very little active time in the kitchen thanks to the help it takes from your slow cooker. Spread it on toast, cover over your pork chop, or just eat it out of the jar with a spoon.  

Thank you for all for the support, words of encouragement and comments on The Grateful Farmer blog, friends. I am so thankful for everyone who has wanted to follow along as I share my hopeful journey of learning how to operate a 50 acre small family Orchard. Thank you everyone who has come up to visit our farm stand because you found my blog. It really means to world to me that you have chosen to friend a new orchardist like me and I am so very grateful for you all.