Orchards provide their nearby communities, counties, and states with freshly-grown fruits, vegetables, and herbs. Many of them share their premises with other farmers to sell their eggs, meats, poultry, cheeses, butters, and ice creams or yogurts. As you walk along the rows of shelving you’ll see jars and containers filled with syrups, jams, jellies, sauces, spices, and seasonings. I find my husband lingering among the hot sauces, candies, pies and cakes. Often there is someone offering little tasting portions for the shoppers to try. It’s just one of the reasons that makes a visit to an orchard a fun trip to take with the children, plus they love getting to pick their own berries.
Over the past six or seven weeks there were cherries and strawberries, too, to be picked by shoppers. This month blueberries are plentiful and picking time is from mid-morning until about 1 PM. This year at Butler’s Orchard it’s “one of their biggest crops ever!”
Buying locally helps to insure the livelihoods of our local farmers, who depend upon us to purchase their produce and support their way of life. Our country was founded by millions of settlers who planted, grew, harvested and rotated their crops. They grew large families and everyone had a job to do as soon as they were old enough to help. Farming was a major way of living and supporting one’s family over the last centuries. That is until modern technology, fast-paced transport and lightning-speed communications became the norm. We import foods from around the world, and while it’s lovely to enjoy exotic tastes, we must remember that our nation’s farmers have been reduced by about 70%! Those families who choose an agricultural life and offer their crops to us are precious to our way of life, too. We all depend upon each other and buying from them versus buying imported, is the support they need.
Here are some of the photos I took on our last trip to our local orchard. Hopefully you will be encouraged to find one in your area and buy farm fresh directly. When we do this, it saves them having to share their profits with the grocery stores. Nice! We all win. There is an interesting site I found which explain sustainable living and farming. You might wish to click the link for some valuable information and perhaps bookmark the site in order to check for updates, for you and your family.
