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Dave & Kerry's Casa, Orchards, & Farm

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Valley Center, CA
Dave & Kerry's Casa, Orchards, & Farm

This page is about our agricultural practices, produce, and farm life. Hopefully the information we provide will be of use or interest to our followers.

Our Orchards & Farm which supplies fruit to Raging Cider & Mead Co as well as food for our home

Operating as usual

05/12/2018

There is something satisfying about grazing your backyard first thing in the morning

03/24/2018

Ah spring, the oranges are blooming, the wild mustard is exploding (we love in salad), and the chickweed, peas, & chard are going nuts.

03/09/2018

Hopefully, we are done with night time freezing temperatures; our fig trees have decided it is time to come out of dormancy

10/15/2017

We currently have this massive volunteer squash plant growing in our orchard. We thought it would be some sort of pumpkin as a pumpkin was smashed at that location last year; but, these bear no resemblance to any pumpkin we know, haha

10/04/2017

Well, we have a couple confused apple trees plus our passionfruit vine is blooming. They make for a beautiful sight as we slide towards winter. Just today we noticed some of our fruit trees showing off some color as they prepare to drop their leaves for the year.

08/27/2017

Our propagated wild apples are looking ready for planting this late winter

08/13/2017

After a few years of tending to this apricot tree with only a few so so fruits every year, we finally got a smallish harvest of very tasty apricots which are just starting to ripen.

08/03/2017

Our Panache Figs are finally starting to ripen. The story of how figs are fertilized is an interesting one. Female fig wasps crawl inside the fig bud to lay eggs and carry pollen with them which then pollinates the bud. The buds then ripen into a fig (don't worry, the wasp and eggs are dissolved while the buds ripen).

07/29/2017

Our first decent crop of pluots are almost ripe

07/29/2017

Kerry's bean tripod is off the hook this year. Fortunately she planted sunflowers around it for extra vine supports.

07/19/2017

Looks like it's time to start harvesting our Cascade hops. That yellow dust inside the petals is lupulin, the bitter/flavoring component in hops, the presence of which means they are ready for harvest.

07/15/2017

....and just like that, the beginning of elderberry season is upon us

07/04/2017

Our wild apple tree experiment continues. We still have (5) Crimson Gold apple/crabapple cross seedlings growing as well as (3) Egremont Russet seedlings, from seeds we brought home from England. If you are unaware, most apples do not produce seeds that replicate the parent tree, in fact every seed will produce a unique tree. It will be interesting to see if any of these make for good cider apples

07/03/2017

It is plumapalooza time. It is literally raining Santa Rosa plums from our trees. Some of these we eat and giveaway; the rest are being packaged for later use at Raging Cider & Mead.

06/30/2017

It would appear that it is tomato/canning season.

06/25/2017

Our cascade hops are starting to form their hop cones

06/23/2017

Gotta' love that first ripe peach of the year

06/03/2017

Sometimes replanting is like a treasure hunt, looks like we found buried garlic treasure

06/03/2017

It looks like our first plums are just about coming ripe. The other two varieties still look to be a while before they start ripening

05/27/2017

It is getting to be berry season around these parts. Besides all these we normally have raspberries which we had to cut back hard last year as they were consuming one of our apple trees. They should start producing again next year.

05/20/2017

The first wine caps of the year in one of our mushroom beds. These are growing on a mix of willow, pear, and apple wood chips. They can get up to 12" in diameter when fully open and are very tasty.

05/13/2017

These are our experiments for the future. Apple tree seedlings from the Crimson Gold apple crab cross, Arkansas Black apple, and Egremont Russet apple. Perhaps one day one or more of these will produce a new awesome cider apple.

05/11/2017

Dug some small temporary swales (next year we will build a much larger system of swales) at our hillside young orchard and filled them with wood chips. The swales help to capture hillside runoff during the rains and divert that water underground to build up the underground water in the soil. The wood chips will slowly breakdown through fungal action and create nutrient dense soil for the trees. So far it seems to have worked well. We have only watered once, since their original plantings, on a hot day 1 1/2 weeks ago. We also have some other new trees where we diverted runoff to settle in the mulched ground around them and have yet to water those trees since their initial plantings

05/06/2017

There are alot of fig buds on our tree this year

04/23/2017

Some exciting things are going on in our orchards.

04/06/2017

Dave & Kerry's Casa, Orchards, & Farm's cover photo

03/11/2017

Our new rooster Kevin is alternately doing sexy dance and picking on our hens. We decided the girls needed someone to watch over them after our last rooster Retardo died at the hands of a golden eagle, likely to save one of the girls

02/26/2017

Just added 3 vines to our miniature vineyard. It now has tempranillo, syrah, cabernet, and mourvèdre wine grapes. These will be head trained instead of trellised. We also have a few table grapes planted around the property and the local wild grape, vitus californica, growing in the riverbed

02/25/2017

Our bee friends are hard at work pollinating our first apple blossoms, as well as the peach blossoms

02/16/2017

Even more signs of life around the casa

02/11/2017

Our first blossoms have opened with the promise of this year's first crop of apples

02/10/2017

Our first crabapple seedlings are sticking their heads out. We moistened a paper towel, wrapped the seeds in it, put in a plastic bag, and set in the refrigerator. Once the seeds had germinated we transplanted into soil.

If you do not know, apples typically do not produce offspring that are the same as the parents. In fact, typically every seed will produce a different type of apple. These are from an apple crabapple cross so what they produce could be really interesting

02/04/2017

Grafting some good cider apples onto this tree which does not produce a very good apple. Eventually, if it works we should have some really good apples from this tree.

01/25/2017

A plus with all this rain is the asparagus are starting to sprout forth into the world

12/18/2016

Our youngest apple orchard is still largely frozen at 8:30 this morning. This part of the property is perfect for our trees with higher chill requirements as the cold air that rolls off the hill above sits here. We will be adding 10 more trees to this area in late January

Address

29426 Paso Robles Road
Valley Center, CA
92082

Telephone

(760) 749-5456

Website

facebook.com

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