Our Hoshigaki Special has ended. Thank you to new and old customers for helping us adjust our supply. We are now in a good place to have a moderate supply of hoshigaki for the next 5 months till the 2025 season for drying persimmons begins.
Hoshigaki is available at the farm stand and through mail order.
For
mail orders please use our 2024 mail order form.
When I was growing up on this farm, my parents were farmers. They needed to grow the most and the best looking crop they could so it would produce big pieces of fruit and beautiful unblemished fruit that would be marketable. My parents could not just grow fruit on a whim. They had to care for the trees so the crop would be salable. But in the process trees showed signs of disease and fruit attracted pests. So the advice at that time was to find an additive, usually a chemical, that would get rid of the disease or pest. Loosely defined, this is conventional agriculture. Trees need nitrogen, then add nitrogen fertilizers to the soil. Trees get a virus, then spray them with a chemical to kill the virus. Years later, people became aware that adding chemicals was not the best thing for the soil, or for people. Government put in place numerous regulations to determine how much and which chemicals are safe to be used. The industry has since looked for other ways of controlling diseases and pests, and for ways to build the soil and keep people healthy. Today we see organic, sustainable, regenerative, climate-smart, and combinations of agricultural practices.
So what practices are used at Otow Orchard. It's been almost 20 years since we transitioned from spraying pesticides to giving up all sprays on this farm. We are sometimes tempted to apply organically accepted sprays. There are many organically approved sprays currently in use. These include bacteria or viruses that disrupt the targeted pest or disease and not effect humans or the environment. Some sprays are natural clays that surround produce to protect it from pests, disease, smoke or sunburn. At this point we have not used any of these. We like to say that our practices are "No Spray" agriculture.
How do we deal with pests and diseases? Thankfully, many of our customers are tolerant of scarred, misshaped and under-sized fruit. I will add that we do use mating disruption lures to control worms. Many of our customers were put off when told that fruit might contain worms. Luckily there is an organic practice of using mating disruption lures that has worked very well on our orchard for the past 14 years. The lure we hang in the tree attracts the male moth. He thinks he can smell a female moth but cannot find her. This results in fewer matings and fewer eggs to be laid and therefore fewer worms to be hatched. We also have a small army of good bugs feasting on bad bugs in our orchard. We also discovered that keeping diseased fruit off the orchard floor decreased the presence of disease.
For another few weeks citrus will dominate our offerings at the farm stand. Then gradually we will start to get loquat, peaches and apricots then plums.
We are still on modified hours. When harvest begins we will revert to our full time hours.
Closed Sundays and Mondays.
Open Tues,Wed and Thurs only two hours 11:30 to 1:30
Open Fri and Sat: 10 am to 6 pm
Here is what we have at the Farm Stand from Otow Orchard.
Hachiya Pulp: Frozen
Hachiya persimmon pulp is available. Often used to make cookies,
puddings and breads. Many customers put it on yogurt and oatmeal or
add it to their smoothie.
Eureka Lemons: These are very tart lemons. Great for contrast in sweet and sour recipes like: lemonade, lemon meringue pie, sweet and sour pork, and lemon bars.
Yellow grapefruit: Sweet tart grapefruit with yellow flesh. This variety has great flavor.
Local Honey Honey 🍯 from bees 🐝 at Otow Orchard. Bee pollen from bees 🐝 at Otow Orchard is also available.
⚘ Calendula Salve and Lip Balm: Wonderfully thick salve for healing dry skin, bug bites and scrapes.
Peach trees: We have a few peach trees for planting. Regina peaches are a yellow freestone peach that is harvested around the end of June.
Pakistani Mulberries: Long dark mulberries. Very sweet. Available only to those on the request list. Call to get on the list.
Ume: Japanese sour plums (apricot). Limited supply. Available only to those on the request list. Call (916) 791-1656 or email otoworchard@yahoo.com to get on the list. This year's crop was damaged by multiple hail storms in March. As the fruit grew, so did the scaring. All fruit is damaged. Some customers will still process with salt, sweetener or alcohol even with the scars. They are just looking for the unique flavor and fragrance of ume.
Here is what we have from other producers:
Arrow Place in Auburn, no spray practices:
Meyer
Lemons: These lemons have dark yellow skin and are less acidic than
regular lemons. Known for their flavor and fragrance. Skin is thin and
is often used for its fragrant zest.
Stoney Point Orchard, Loomis, CA organic certified:
Rio Red Grapefruit: Juicy and sweet with a bit of tartness. Flesh is pink.
La Bella Vito Farm in Loomis is bringing us fresh🥚 eggs from pastured 🐔🐔chickens. Limited supply.
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