Front entrance to the quaint farm store at Hentze's Farm.
I attended the Hentze Farm Cherry Festival with the Lane County Extension Service Master Food Preservers last month. We had an excellent time serving up cherry pie filling with ice cream and doing demos for making the pie filling and cherry vinegar. Hentze’s farm is on the Willamette river in Junction City and is obviously a well loved location judging by the turnout. The farm is well cared for as well with many lovely flower plantings and a row of clean and well oiled farm machinery folks to view on the way into the farm.
Interior of farm store.
Wonderful fresh produce.
Apricots!
All the well kept tractors on display.
Cookin' up the Chix Barbeque next to the barn.
Getting set up at the Extension Service Master Food Preserver booth at the festival.
Finished pie filling waiting to be sampled.
Folks sampling the pie filling over ice cream.
All in all, a good day was had by everyone. Looking forward to next year.
A week or so ago we went out to Bear Fruit (541-995-3445) in Harrisburg to pick some blueberries. On the way out to the farm (which is close to the Willamette River) we spotted a family of Osprey in a nest atop a telephone pole:
A vigilant parent and a couple of curious siblings. This nest was right along the dirt road. We also noticed another nest with 2 juveniles out in one of the hay fields. Very beautiful birds with an eerie chirping call. I’ve seen them pluck fish out of the water while I was hiking along either the Willamette or McKenzie Rivers near Eugene.
When we got out to Bear Fruit we found that their berries were almost gone. They had had a short season. We picked a half a bucket and decided to go pick peaches at Detering Orchard up the road back toward Harrisburg.
Bear Fruit has a well managed open blueberry orchard with their weighing and selling shed down toward the entrance. They had started irrigation for fall in the pastures next to the berries. My boys had fun getting wet in the spray. Refreshing on such a hot day.
At Detering Orchard we headed out into the peach orchard to pick Red Haven peaches. They were large and nicely ripe. We picked 40lbs in about half an hour or so. In retrospect, I think we should have picked a bit less ripe as the peaches got bruises just from being handled and in the box. Better to pick less ripe and ripen at home to lessen bruising. As it turned out we juiced most and ate the rest fresh or in cobblers and pies (yum!).
They have a fun, colorful fruit stand with lots of preserves and nuts as well as fruits and veggies for sale. They also have u-pick vegatables as well as their u-pick fruit. I always enjoy a trip out to Detering, it is like a trip back in time. That’s our #1 picker Ciaran with our peaches.
On the way back home we stopped at a car show in Coburg. It was already closing down but we got to look at a few cars and chat with some of the owners. Beautiful vehicles.
All in all a great way to spend a summer day. Check out the previous processing post to see what we did with the peaches. Lots of good info there.
