Happy New Year!

The fruit stand will be open for shortened hours Tues., Dec. 31st and Thurs., Jan. 2nd.  We are closed Wednesday for New Year's day. 

Here are the hours for this week:
Tues., 12/31-11-2
Wed., 1/1-Closed
Thurs., 1/2-11-2
Fri., 1/3-9-6
Sat., 1/4-9-6
Sun., 1/5-10-5

At the fruit stand we have mandarins, navel oranges, soft persimmons, hoshigaki (Japanese hand-dried persimmons),  kiwi fruit, Asian pear, local free-range chicken eggs, honey, propolis, bee pollan, jam and cookbooks.  We still have hoshigaki available through mail order, too. 

Persimmons, Pears & Producers Co-op

Maru ("chocolate", Nagamaru, Hyakume & Nishimura Wase ("coffee cake") persimmons, (l. to r. in pairs)

This month our orchard is selling some of our persimmons and Asian pears through the Sierra Foothills Producers Cooperative.  We are offering maru ("chocolate"), fuyu and hachiya persimmons as well as later varieties of Asian pear.

Through the Sierra Foothills Producers Cooperative you can order local grass-fed, hormone free beef, lamb, pork and chicken, as well as eggs, honey, olive oil, jams, mandarins, persimmons and other produce and cheese. This month free range turkeys are also available. Orders are made online and then you choose one of four locations to pick up your order.  Locations are Otow Orchard (in Granite Bay), Sinclair Family Farm (in Penryn), Smoky's (in Truckee) and Tahoe Wellness (in Kings Beach). The next delivery from the Sierra Foothills Producers Cooperative to our orchard will be Friday, Nov. 19th from 4:00-5:00. Orders must be sent in by 4:00 PM Friday, Nov. 9th.   

Placer Farm & Barn Open House

Our orchard is part of this year's Placer Farm and Barn Open House.  We are one of 14 sites that will be open on Sunday, Oct. 14th with tours and activities to celebrate the county's agricultural heritage.  At our orchard from 10-5 we'll have fruit tasting and demonstrations on how to make hoshigaki and vodka persimmons.  Visitors will be able to see our horse and chickens as well as a mini-donkey named Alice and a mini-mule named Coco.  There will be a straw bale maze for kids to play on and a pumpkin patch where you can pick your own pumpkin.  The fruit stand will be open and people can go on tours of the orchard. 

We're also having a raffle to raise money for donations to the Placer Food Bank.  Funds raised will help us buy surplus fruit from local farmers that will be donated to the Food Bank.  Prizes include a pound of hoshigaki, 10 lbs. of mandarins and a gift certificate to our fruit stand. 

Twin Peaks Orchard will have jam for sale from their orchard in Newcastle.  Placer County Master Gardeners, the Placer Food Bank, 4-H, Wayne's Herbs, and the Granite Bay Girl Scouts will also be at the orchard with information tables. In the afternoon, Anatoli will be working with his bees in the apiary and visitors can go and watch. 

Presentations:

Hoshigaki:  The Ancient Art of Drying Persimmons:  10:30, 1:00, 4:00
Watch as Tosh and Toshio peel, hang, massage and explain the steps to making hoshigaki.
 

Orchard Diversity Above and Below Ground: 11:30, 2:30

Learn about Otow Orchard's sustainable practices to encourage biological diversity while growing fresh produce without synthetic chemicals, presented by Julie Steele. Julie's projects include worm composting, soil drenching, and compost tea.

Making Vodka Persimmons: 12:30, 3:00

Learn how we treat our hyakume persimmons with vodka to sweeten them. 

Orchard Tours:  11:00, 3:30

Busy with Hoshigaki

This past week the hoshigaki drying process slowed a bit because of a few days of rain and a string of foggy mornings.  As a result, the persimmons have filled up the drying rooms and we even ran out of sticks to hang the freshly peeled ones on.  Tosh has been making new drying racks and sticks to try to accomodate all the kaki. We converted the cool room that we use when it's  warmer for refrigeration into a drying room, so now we have all the possible inside rooms being used for drying.

The freshly peeled persimmons are first hung on sticks on the outside racks until they're  dry enough to massage.  Then the sticks are usually moved into the hot house, which is a small building used like a green house where we can open the doors and windows and and adjust the temperature and air circulation.  As the sticks of hoshigaki get dryer they're moved through two other drying rooms, then to the final drying and packing room.  In each room the hoshigaki are  massaged to help them dry evenly and remain soft. In the photo at the left you can see freshly peeled persimmons hung on sticks on the outside racks, the hot house is on the right.

Tosh making a new rack

We're still peeling persimmons to start new hoshigaki because the persimmons are still hard enough to peel.  Soon we'll need to stop peeling because the persimmons will either be mostly too ripe to dry well or the weather will be too cool or damp for them to dry well.  Right now we're still taking orders for pick up at the fruit stand or mail order. If you'd like to pick up more than a pound of hoshigaki at out fruit stand, it's a good idea to call ahead. 

When we need to stop taking orders we'll post it here on our web site. 

Community Events

This Sunday, Oct. 23rd, there's a  Farm-to-Table Dinner at the local Lone Buffalo Vineyards featuring local seasonal foods, including produce from our orchard.  There will be vineyard tours, and a six course dinner put on by Source Global Tapas restaurant.  Click here for more information and to register.

The weekend of Nov. 11th and 12th will be busy for us, because we'll be demonstrating hoshigaki (Japanese traditional hand-dried persimmon) at two different locations.  On Saturday, Nov. 11th from 10-2 we'll be talking about persimmons and how to make hoshigaki at Bushnell Garden supply in Granite Bay. This is a drop-in event with no need to register ahead.

On Sunday, Nov. 12th from 10-3 we'll be at Twin Peaks Orchard in New Castle for their Fall Harvest Open House.  Twin Peaks is an orchard that started about the same time as ours in 1911 and our families have known each other since then.  Twin Peaks grows grows a lot of the same fruits we do, including persimmons.  Their specialty is amagaki persimmons, which are hyakume persimmon treated so that they're sweet when still firm.  We'll be there to demonstrate hoshigaki.  For more information, see the Twin Peaks website.

Ume

As the ume ripen, they have a pink blush, then turn yellow.

We have a supply of fresh ume at the fruit stand now.   Ume is a small sour type of Japanese plum that is preserved to make umeboshi and other types of Japanese pickles and condiments. Umeboshi (pickled ume) are sometimes put in the center of rice balls (onigiri).  Ume is very fragrant, sour, sweet and usually salty. Ume fruit is actually more closely related to an apricot than a plum, and the tree is the first of the year to blossom in January. 

Helen makes umeboshi most every year using a process that involves pressing the fruits and salt in a container with a heavy weight on top,  drying the preserved ume in the sun on a cloth for a few days and then putting them in liquid again with purple shiso (perilla).  Customers who have ordered ume in past years have brought us samples of what they've made, too.  We've gotten to taste ume pickled in different ways, ume flavored miso, ginger preserved in ume pickling juice (beni shoga), and ume flavored shoyu, all of which are very delicious.   Most years we sell out of ume so we don't write about it on the website, but this year our neighbors the Koyamas brought us a lot from their trees, so we have enough to mention.  If you want to order ume, you can call the orchard at (916) 791-1656 or stop by the fruit stand.

Spring at the Orchard

The path leading from the back of the fruit stand to Obaachan's garden.

It seems to have stopped raining for a while, so we've been able to get started thinning the fruit on the trees and planting the vegetable gardens.  Although most years it's safe to plant tomatoes by tax day (April 15th) here, this year it still seems too wet and cold.  Hopefully next week there will be warm sunny weather for the gardens.  

The next delivery date for the Sierra Foothills Meat Buyers Club is Friday, April 22nd from 3:30-5:00.  Through the Meat Buyers Club you can order locally raised, hormone-free meat, eggs and honey online, then pick it up your order at the orchard.  There are other two other delivery sites in Placer County, too, if the orchard isn't convenient.  To order for the April 22nd delivery,  your order must be sent in before 5:00 PM on Monday, April 18th.

At the fruit stand we have oranges, grapefruit, lemons, kiwi, hoshigaki (Japanese hand-dried persimmon), honey, and eggs. 

Orchard in Bloom

Viviano pretends to eat a pink peach blossom.

The orchard is now blooming with white and pink blossoms from the peach and plum trees.  Come out and visit to take a walk soon, while the blossoms are still out.  Next to bloom should be cherry, Asian pear and apple trees, but since there are less of those in the orchard, the blossoming is not as dramatic.  Persimmon trees bloom after that with hard to see tiny yellowish-green flowers.

Tree planting and pruning are finished now, so we've been doing other work before the busy season begins.  We're starting to prepare the vegetable gardens for next month's planting.  Tosh and others have had time to work on remodeling the fruit stand building to finish up the hoshigaki drying room and to improve access to the public restroom. 

At the fruit stand we have navel and blood oranges, grapefruit, Eureka lemons, local honey, eggs and hoshigaki (hand-dried persimmon).  You can also still order hoshigaki through mail order if you follow the link to the order form here on our web page.

Hoshigaki Waiting List

Obaachan massaging with Mizuki, Frisbee and Mocha.

We're sorry to say that any new mail orders for hoshigaki (dried persimmons) for this season will have to be placed on a wait list.  We need to fill the orders we've already received and then check if we have any supply left over.

If you'd like to be placed on the hoshigaki wait list, please mail in the order form so we can get your information.  We'll then notify you when we know if we can fill your order.  We have almost 400 lbs. of hoshigaki orders to fill already, so it may take a while to get to the list if it's possible.

If you are able to come to the orchard, you can still buy small amounts of hoshigaki at the fruit stand.  At the fruit stand we have grades A and B, but not premium hoshigaki for sale.  Premium has the softest texture and is the grade that gets sold in mail orders. 

This year's hoshigaki season had a bit of a late start, and an early finish because of periods of rain and cold.  The freezing temperatures around Thanksgiving time and then the rain made us have to end peeling any more persimmons, so what's drying now is all we'll have for this year's supply.

Uri

What can you do with an Armenian cucumber that got this big?  You can use it like an uri and make pickles.  An uri is a type of melon that people use to make Japanese pickles (tsukemono).  Since the actual uri is hard to find in the United States, people sometimes use over-size Armenian cucumbers, because they're similar and actually a melon.

I found two recipes for uri pickles from a cookbook called "Nihon Shoku", a Japanese-American cookbook put together by the Placer Buddhist Church in nearby Penryn, California.  The shorter version was called 'uri no kasuzuke', and a longer version that called for a year of curing was called 'uri narazuke'.  Both recipes call for sake no kasu, which is a by product of making sake.  You can find sake no kasu in a Japanese or other Asian grocery store.   Below is the recipe with the shorter curing time.

Uri No Kasuzuke
 
Uri or cucumber
Salt
1 lb. Sake no kasu
1 lb. brown sugar


Cut uri; remove seeds; fill the cavity with salt and leave in shade until salt disappears (about 1 day).  Put uri in deep container and put cut side down; place in large flat dish and put weight on.  Leave about 2 weeks.  Remove from container and lay the uri in the shade to dry, covered with paper for about 2 days.  Combine sake no kasu with the brown sugar.  Put layer of uri, cut side up, in a container; cover with sake no kasu mixture; repeat, ending with sake no kasu.  It will be watery within a week.  Taste the uri, if it is too salty, add more sugar.  If using pickling cucumber, use whole.  It is ready to eat in 2 weeks, but will taste better the linger it stays in the kasu.

New Fruits and Vegetables at the Fruit Stand

A few new things ready at the orchard.  Apricots and the early summer peaches are ready, as well as zucchini, Swiss chard, garlic and basil.  Above is a photo of yellow zucchini growing in the garden.

If you have space left in your garden, we still have a few plants from Peas and Harmony for sale at the fruit stand. There are pepper plants, winter and summer squash plants, eggplant and herb seedlings.

For father's day Chris made a peach and berry cobbler from Joanne Neft and Laura Kenny's Placer County Real Food Cookbook that was really good.  The recipe called for olallieberries, but since we don't have those at the orchard she used raspberries, mulberries and peaches.  

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

• Plums--Red beaut, beauty
  
• Peaches--May Crest, June Crest
• Apricots--Patterson
  
• Cherries--Bing
• Loquat (biwa)
• Vegetables--zucchini, Swiss chard, garlic and herbs (basil, rosemary, oregano)
  
• Honey--(raw, from bees living at our orchard)
• Organic vegetable seedlings--from Peas and Harmony

Early Summer work at the Orchard

In the orchard we have been thinning persimmons from the trees, weed-eating around the sprinklers and checking and repairing the irrigation.  In the vegetable gardens we just finished planting the last winter squash by seed.  Most of the zucchini and summer squash plants are starting to produce.  The tomatoes are all green still, and they do seem like they'll be ready later than usual. 

We pulled up the last of the garlic from the wire-lined beds and then planted the beds  with specialty pumpkins (such as cinderella and white pumpkins). There's just enough time after the garlic is pulled out in early June to put in pumpkins that will ripen by the beginning of October.  The beds are wire-lined to keep out gophers, since garlic is one of gophers' favorite things to eat.  They also like to eat roots of pumpkin plants and chew on the pumpkins themselves.

To keep gophers out, we make a raised bed with hardware cloth on the bottom and aviary wire on the sides.   Though it's a lot of work to make beds like this, it's worth it for certain crops, since gophers are unable to chew through the wire to whatever is planted there.  Toshio has also been setting lots of gopher traps around the orchard to try to get rid of gophers in the other parts of the vegetable gardens.  In the photo above is Toshio with a few gophers that he caught in traps.

Tosh and the Orchard on Good Day Sacramento

Tomorrow the morning TV show "Good Day Sacramento" is coming to the orchard.  They're supposed to be filming scenes live from the orchard from 7:00 to 8:00 AM off and on, and spend a few minutes talking with Tosh.  The show is on channel 31 locally.   Click here for a link to their show.  From the web page you can watch it live on line, or watch the show later on.

Cherries & Sactown Magazine

We picked the first cherries this week and they're now for sale at the fruit stand.  We had to pick them a little earlier than we wanted, because rain was expected again.  It has continued to be cool here with many record lows for the month so far.  Some of the tomato plants I replanted even frosted again this past weekend.  I pruned off the frosted parts, but if the plants survive the tomatoes will probably still be delayed. 

A nice article featuring our orchard comes out in this month's Sactown Magazine  "Best of the City" issue.   The article is called "Home Eat Home" and it's about 10 local farms and their specialties.  Otow Orchard is noted for persimmons.  The article isn't online, but you can find the magazine for sale in a lot of places throughout our area.

At left is a photo of ripening loquat (or biwa) on the tree.  Most are now yellow to orange and a little riper than this, so they should be ready to pick soon. 

Unusual Events

This weekend, while we were busy planting the vegetable gardens and thinning peaches from the trees, a few unexpected things happened.

The first was that we found a snake curled up on the window sill in the basement.  As far as anyone could remember, no rattle snakes had ever been seen at the orchard, but we were still worried that maybe that's what it was.  When Tosh looked closely at the snake he could see by its markings that it was actually a young gopher snake.  He picked it up carefully and took it outside to a gopher hole in a garden.  Above is a photo of Mizuki looking at the snake. 

Also, the neighbors' turkey attracted a wild turkey and they both wandered around the orchard together.  The neighbors' turkey is a male and it spent hours showing off the for female wild turkey by trying to intimidate people at the orchard.  He would puff out his feathers, drag the tips of his wings on the ground to make a hissing sound, and go anywhere there were people and circle around them.  Eventually the neighbor came over to make the turkey walk home and the wild turkey followed. In the photo above, the turkeys are in the parking lot by the fruit stand, the male is in front. 



The third unusual thing that happened was that I found something strange rapidly growing and spreading in my garden.  Early Saturday morning during the 4-H organic gardening group, we noticed something that looked like gooey curdled milk spilled on the edge of a garden bed.  The kids poked it and it turned reddish brown within a few minutes.  Later in the afternoon I went back to the same garden bed and found that the gooey patch was gone from where it had been, but that another patch of something was a little ways away down the bed.  It was spreading along the lines of irrigation tape in the rows. This patch wasn't gooey-looking, but instead was bumpy and whitish yellow like tiny cauliflower.  You can see a photo of it above, growing near some bean seedlings. 

I showed the thing growing in the garden to Toshio and he thought maybe it was a type of slime mold.  At home we looked up information about slime molds and found that what was in my garden matched the description and photos of a type of slime mold actually called Fuligo septicam or "dog vomit slime mold".  Wikipedia had an article with photos of examples of  "dog vomit slime mold". 

The next morning when I went to the garden, the patch was smoothing out and turning darker, from whitish yellow to yellowish brown, like browning meringue.  By the end of that day it was marbled light brown. All of this fits the description of what dog vomit slime mold is supposed to be like, so it seems likely that that's what it is.  This type of slime mold feeds on bacteria, and doesn't usually grow on living plants, although it can do that.  Since the mold wasn't growing on any live plants and it was probably helping the compost break down, I left it as it was.  I did decide not to water that area for a few days though, because maybe this mold formed because conditions had been too wet in the garden bed.  Below is a photo of how it looked late Sunday afternoon. 
  

Otow Orchard on California Country

We will be featured on an episode of "California Country" that's showing this week on ABC television stations throughout California. The episode features some of the different types of persimmons we grow, the orchard and our family. It will be shown locally on KXTV channel 10 Sacramento on Friday, Jan. 22 at 11:30 AM.  The episode is also about celery, brussel sprouts and winter gardens.  Click here for a link to the website.  California Country magazine also did a very good article about hoshigaki (dried persimmons) at our orchard a few years ago.  Click here for the link to the article.

At the fruit stand we now have small amounts of hoshigaki for sale.  We finished sending out mail orders, called people on the waiting lists and found that we actually have a little bit of hoshigaki left.  Mandarins are gone, but we now have clementines, navel oranges, grapefruit, lemons, apples, kiwi and soft persimmons. 

Peeling Has Ended

We stopped peeling more persimmons to dry for hoshigaki just before Thanksgiving this week.  The persimmons have gotten too soft to peel and to dry well at this point.  This means that what we started drying already will be all that can be made for the season.  We're still taking orders for hoshigaki though, and we still have some for sale in the fruit stand. 

In the photo above you can see buckets of persimmon peelings next to Toshio's worm bin at the orchard.  Toshio had been feeding some of the peelings to the worms along with other compost from the orchard. The worm castings make very rich fertilizer that we hope to use for the gardens next spring.

California Gold & Open House

The PBS television show California Gold featuring Otow Orchard drying persimmons will air again this Fall. Here are the times we know of so far:

• Thurs., Nov. 12th, 7:30 PM on KCET Los Angeles
• Thurs., Nov. 19th, 9:00 PM on KVIE Sacramento

Huell Howser of California Gold came to interview people at the orchard and show the process of making hoshigaki (dried persimmons) in the Fall of 2007. The episode has aired quite a few times since then, in California and also in Huell Howser's home state of Tennessee. Click here for more about the show.

Also, we hope lots of people come out to this coming Saturday's open house at the orchard.  The orchard is very pretty right now, with the foliage of some of the trees turning turning red, orange and yellow. The open house is sponsored and organized by Placer Land Trust , and will take place at Otow Orchard  on Saturday, Nov. 14th from 1:00-3:00 PM.  There will be free food, tours of the orchard,  hoshigaki demonstrations and hay bales and tractors to play on.  The orchard and fruit stand will be open from 9-6 as usual that day.  Click here for a link to their site with information about the event.  The open house is free and open to the public.  


The photo above shows a maru persimmon tree at the edge of the old packing shed at the orchard. 

Persimmon Tasting & Open House

On Saturday, Nov. 8th, we will do a hoshigaki demonstration at Twin Peaks Orchard in Newcastle, as part of the Persimmon Tasting event taking place there.  We'll bring drying persimmons in various stages to demonstrate and talk about the drying process.  Twin Peaks orchard is a nearby orchard that is also multi-generational and family-owned.  Twin Peaks started almost 100 years ago, around the same time as Otow Orchard, and our families have known each other since then.  Some of Twin Peak specialties are amagaki persimmons and peaches.

On Saturday, Nov. 14th from 1:00-3:00 PM Placer Land Trust is sponsoring an open house at our orchard.  There will be food, tours and hoshigaki demonstrations.  Click here for a link to their site with information about the event.  Both events are free and open to everyone. 

At left is a photo of a branch of sunburned hachiya persimmons. 

Busy at the Orchard

The orchard has been very busy with all aspects of making hoshigaki (dried persimmons) lately. We've been peeling and hanging as many persimmons as possible while the weather is good and while the persimmons are still hard enough to peel. There are now hoshigaki drying all stages. Freshly peeled persimmons are hanging on the racks and wall outside, the glass hot house has already-massaged persimmons, and the other indoor drying rooms have racks of drier persimmons. We spend time going through the racks massaging the hoshigaki and moving the sticks to a new location if they are ready. Some hoshigaki are nearly finished and "sugaring up", meaning that they are starting to show a powdery dusting of fructose on the surface. We expect to have some of the first hoshigaki of the season finished within the next two weeks.

Aside from working with hoshigaki and keeping track of mail orders, we are also sending out orders of fresh persimmons and Asian pears. Quite a few community groups have been coming for scheduled tours of the orchard, too.

In the fruit stand we now have lots of fuyu persimmons of various sizes. In general, summer vegetables such as tomatoes are now almost finished. Our pumpkin patch is open if you're looking for pumpkins for Halloween.

Here's what you'll find for sale at the fruit stand now:

• Persimmons--Maru, hachiya, hyakume (vodka-treated), fuyu
• Apples--Fuji, Golden Delicious, Mutsu
• Asian pear--Okusankichi (large brown variety)
• Grapes--Ribier
• Jujube
• Pomegranate--white variety
• Quince
• Winter Squash--butternut, delicata, red kuri, kabocha, Hokkaido
• Vegetables--tomatillos, eggplant, bitter melon, peppers (sweet and hot), basil
• Honey-from bees at our orchard
• PUMPKINS (to choose at the fruit stand or pick your own in the pumpkin patch)--Jack-o-lantern (small and large), specialty types, pie pumpkins

Above you can see photos of Viviano practicing peeling next to a tub of peeled hachiya persimmons ready for stringing and hanging on the racks, and a photo of Helen peeling more persimmons while Toshio strings some for hanging.