Maddie Clements, New Roots, Inc. VISTA
We love our shareholders berry much so we have been working hard to get some more fresh fruit in our shares. We had blueberries in July but we know other fruits have been on our minds too. It was a very sad day when we heard the watermelon crop had failed. We started hoping and praying we could at least get some apples for you this season.
Last week we heard from the apple farmers that we could pick up on Friday and then we went into a slight panic, and organizing mode. Our beloved Beet Mobile is running on empty these days and we knew it would be a bad idea to try and make that hour and a half drive to Evansville in a truck that’s not running so smoothly. We posted on our Facebook hoping there might be a shareholder or two with a truck and some free time. Thanks to Dana our amazing New Albany Market Manager who was already renting a truck that Friday, she swooped in to save the day!
We also want to thank Engelbrecht’s Countryside Orchard for the work they do growing beautiful and delicious fruits. We picked up about 950 pounds of apples so I’m sure it took a lot of work for them to pick each apple from the tree. Our apple varieties for the next two weeks of Markets will be Golden Delicious and Red Delicious. We hope you are excited and enjoy this special treat!
We always like to shed some spotlight on our farm partners for the awesome work they do so I’m going to tell you a bit about their orchard. Taking a visit to Engelbrechts you can experience the difference between store bought and freshly picked, juicy, in season, tree-ripened fruit. They grow several different fruits seasonally including peaches, cherries, nectarines, strawberries, pumpkins and last but never least APPLES! Yes, pumpkins are actually a fruit.
You can either buy from their farm stand with still pretty freshly picked fruit and homemade apple cider or you can choose to pick your own apples or peaches straight from the tree. Unfortunately peaches are no longer in season but their apple picking will last through mid October. They have about 50 acres for you to explore which sounds like an awesome family fun activity this fall.
Their pumpkin patch has also just opened for the season where you can pick your own pumpkin as well. If you are able to make a trip it would be well worth it but we are so glad we get to bring the crisp and juicy delicious apples straight to you!
