Have you ever tried an olive right off the tree? It’s terribly bitter. So unpleasant, in fact, that it makes you wonder how it ever occurred to someone to make it into something consumable. How did...
It all started in Tuscany, 2001. Farmer Al and Chef Becky visited a B&B during olive harvest. On a warm, sunny day, they picked olives by hand into nets beneath the trees with their host Georgi...
Kelly Knapp of Miss Bee Haven Honey reaches her bare hand into a hive with no fear. With 120 hives at Frog Hollow (plus more elsewhere!) and almost two decades of beekeeping experience, you can see...
You might look at the lush ground covering in our orchards and see weeds. But we see cover crops. “Cover crops” are plants that cover the ground so we don’t have bare dirt. Bare dirt brings two pro...
Much like puppies, fruit trees must be trained from the beginning if you want them to behave. How you prune a tree in its first year determines so much of its future life. Then, how you prune it ea...
This harvest season, the trees were loaded with fruit, even more so than years past. We have the extra hot and dry weather to thank for that—a mixed blessing considering that it also comes with a d...
The orchard is brimming with fruit right now and our kitchen is in high gear preserving the harvest. As part of our commitment to sustainability, we work diligently to avoid wasting fruit in many w...
Sometimes trees in the orchard don’t do as well as Farmer Al hopes. There are plenty of difficult decisions a farmer has to make for the greater good of the farm. And one such decision is giving up...
