Winter Orchard News

We picked the first lemons and kiwi and now have them for sale at the fruit stand. The very last hoshigaki is finishing drying in the last drying room.  We're still taking mail orders for hoshigaki and we have some for sale at the fruit stand.

At the end of last week, we finally got a few days of heavy rain, the first major rain of the winter.  Hopefully the rainfall will catch up to at least the usual amount this year.  Just before the rain it got unusually cold, as you can see in the photo. We had to turn on the irrigation to help protect the citrus from frost, and the spray froze and made interesting patterns.  The ice is supposed to insulate the trees and raise the temperature a few degrees. The first trees are flowering right now, too.  Both the white and pink flowering ume (Japanese plum) started blossoming, and the loquat (biwa) is almost finished.  

Sadly, our rooster was carried away by a coyote and eaten.  On one of the windy, rainy days my daughter heard what she thought sounded like a goose fighting with the chickens by the garden. She looked to see what was going on and saw a coyote carrying the squawking rooster in its mouth and then taking off through the orchard.   The photo in the previous post shows "Blue" the blue Orpington rooster by the edge of the garden where the coyote took him away.

Here's what's at the fruit stand now:

• Mandarins--owari satsuma
  
• Kiwi
• Lemons
• Navel Oranges
• Hoshigaki (Japanese hand-dried persimmon) 
• Persimmons--Hachiya, Fuyu, Maru (chocolate), Hyakume (all soft now)
• Pomegranates--white variety
• Perfectly Persimmon Cookbook--1004 persimmon recipes by Jean Brine
• Placer County Real Food Cookbook--by Joanne Neft and Laura Kenny
• 2012 Master Gardeners Calender
• Eggs