Apricots Anyone?

In the kitchen today, we are processing 400 pounds of these golden babies, perfectly ripe and ready for a bath…in our simmering pots! After we wash and hand separate the pit, these gorgeous stone fruits will be swimming in their own juices, along with our other (not so secret) ingredients to make our infamous Apricot jam. If you’ve ever appreciated the smell of an apricot, multiply that by thousands and you’ll have what I am smelling right now! If the picture is really working for you, click it! You’ll be taken to our website where you can order a few jars, because one just isn’t enough!

Spring is in full effect!

Our busy bees are buzzing about the farm, steadfast in their quest for pollen to make their life sustaining honey! For every bee you see, you can account for 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in your jar! That’s it! The bees work so hard, and provide so much in such a short time.

There are many crops we count on bees to help us grow, and here are some of them:

• Apples
• Onions
• Avocados
• Carrots
• Mangos
• Lemons
• Limes
• Honeydew
• Cantaloupe
• Zucchini
• Summer squash
• Eggplant
• Cucumbers
• Celery
• Green onions
• Cauliflower
• Leeks
• Bok choy
• Kale
• Broccoli
• Broccoli rabe
• Mustard greens

If our bees go away, so do all of these crops! Not to mention the alfalfa that cows eat! Without bees, farmers wouldn’t be able to provide food for their cows, and then beef would become an insanely expensive delicacy akin to the finest truffle or caviar! So save the bees! Plant bee friendly flowers, like Asters, Sunflowers, Mint, Thyme and Poppies! By providing bees with food, you’re ensuring they have enough energy to pollinate the crops nearest their hive. A colony of bees can also use up to forty four pounds of honey during the winter months to sustain life! Bees are in danger now, because of the wide spread use of pesticides and other bee killing poisons.

We love our bees, and never spray anything that can harm them!

Happy Spring!

Berry Plants For Sale

We are now selling berry plants on the farm! We have a nice selection of blueberry, blackberry, Red Raspberry, and grape plants for sale in 1 or 2 gallon pots. Come by the farm and see what we have!

It’s the last wonderful post, of the year!

We’re wrapping up our projects here at the farm, ensuring each gift has been sent and all roads lead to a fresh start this coming New Year.

Winter is quite the different experience on a farm. Where bright green and orange and red fruits had been sprouting before, there is now a dormant shrub or tree busy gathering all the requirements for the next season’s crops.

Where we had installed drip lines, and carefully planted tiny seed after tiny seed there is now just tilled dirt, full of last season’s leftover nutrients. Winter is nature’s natural recovery period. We take care of our soil in winter for a more fruitful bounty in spring and summer.

From all of us at Hurley Farms, we wish you a safe and happy New Year filled with love, laughter and plenty of fresh veggies!!

Last Minute Christmas Gift Panic!

Talk a stroll down For Instance Lane with me.

You’ve been invited to a holiday party, where the hosts are throwing a gorgeous party. You’ve minded your Ps and Qs, by offering to bring a dish. Your gracious host has declined, but Etiquetteer would severely frown on you for showing up with nothing. Your hosts also happen to be wine aficionados so the dusty bottle of whatever no big deal label you have isn’t going to cut it.

You type in to your search bar, “Hostess Gifts” and nothing is really doing it for you. Flowers aren’t personal, and chocolates during the holidays?! No way.

You scroll a bit and find our humble farm website, http://www.hurleyfarms.com.

You see we have many different offerings in the way of boutique jam, mustard, oils, and vinegars. You’re mind starts to wander…Yum, jam. And then you realize, we have gift baskets!

Our jam is so uniquely delicious, your hosts will be delighted to think of you whenever they spread our thick and rich jam across their morning breakfast bread. We can customize your basket, or you may choose one of our premade gifts. Each basket is hand packed and available for pick up or shipping.

In order to save you from the mundane and time consuming task of searching for your perfect holiday hostess gifts, order a few to have on hand along with an extra because it would be far too sad to give away all the delectable jam we lovingly make from scratch. A frequent customer of ours keeps several jars of our jam on hand as last minute thank you gifts for those who may have brought a gift without prior warning! She says our jams make the perfect spontaneous gift!

You may browse our gift selections here:

http://www.hurleyfarms.com/gifts.html

From our farm to you! Thank you for reading today!

 

Berry Plant Starts

Although Winter has teased its arrival with icy mornings and slippers on my feet evenings I must consider what bounty I would like to harvest in Spring and Summer on Hurley Farms.
Every seed is planted and kept as toasty as possible in our greenhouse.
We are starting to plan our berry plants, and would love to start a few for you too! If you call or visit, we can help you plan your summer garden and get your plants started for you. We will plant raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.
You can reserve now for Winter/Spring planting and have a bountiful crop of healthy local berries by late Summer/Fall.

Did you know!?

Hurley Farms is all about local, sustainable farming practices!

Now we’re about to blow your mind with a couple awesome feel good facts about our farming practices, specifically regarding our chickens.

1. We compost! It is a farming necessity!

2. We feed our chickens the fantastic fruit leftovers from the trees we grow on property, and any scraps from our commercial/agricultural kitchen such as strawberry tops, peach peels and pumpkin trimmings!

3. We also use the chicken manure we clean out of their hen house in our compost bin and fields, ensuring rich soil!

To us, having the land is a great gift but using the land responsibly is about ingenuity, and we’ve got tons of it here!

Come visit our farmstand! We’re open today from 10-5!

Bartlett Pear Butter, Apple Butter’s Best Friend

A sweet and sinless cousin to our delicately spiced Apple Butter is the Pear Butter we happen to be jarring this month!

There’s no doubt in our minds, when you taste this unctuous alternative, your mind will go reeling with the number of ways you can apply it to every dish in your repertoire. A treat for the senses, our pear butter is sweet, smooth and expertly spiced.

As long as there have been pear trees, people have been making pear butter. We all know the fruit doesn’t keep very well, in its natural state. We also know pear trees are notorious for giving up pounds upon pounds upon pounds of fruit! A blessing from the earth indeed! Since pear trees can give fruit for as few as fifty or as many as one hundred years, owners have always been fraught with fruit! Cool factoid: Hurley Farms pear trees have been around for about fifty years! Pear butter is an excellent way to solve the excess fruit problem.

After some light research, I’ve come across some interesting tidbits about the pear’s skin. Apparently, that thin and gritty covering packs a powerful punch of fiber (1/3 your daily recommended intake!) and phytonutrients. (Phytonutrients contain cancer busting antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties!!!) When I think of all the icky ways to get more fiber in my diet (A certain orange powder comes to mind) I cringe a little. Now I know just a couple of pears a day can get me almost there, and that makes me super happy! Pears are so delicious! I put them in a salad, with gorgonzola cheese, walnuts and peppery greens, or on my turkey and cranberry sandwich! The possibilities are endless!

Now, if you’ve read this far (and I applaud you if you have) take this one piece of advice on pears:

EAT THE SKIN!

Santa Rosa Plum

Fewer things remind me of my child hood than the Santa Rosa plum. Climbing the tree in my grandmother’s backyard, picking (and eating!) the sun ripened fruit and hearing my mother in the kitchen canning dozens of jars of the tart sweet jam.

The Santa Rosa Plum tree was first cultivated in Santa Rosa, not very many miles from our Napa Valley. The fruit itself is a deep strawberry to orange color, with skin so taut it pops when punctured. The skin’s color is deep ruby, and can be speckled. When you bite into the best plum you’ve ever tasted, the skin should be incredibly tart, the flesh yielding and the juice will spill all down your chin, shirt and may end up on your shoes! If any of these are concerning for you, then our plum jam will give you the taste and texture of fresh plums, without the mess!

Plums are a stone fruit, like cherries and peaches. They are rich in fiber, and are an excellent addition to your daily diet. Plums also aid in iron absorption, which can be critical for those with anemia! What a super fruit!

Here on the farm we use local Santa Rosa plums, and purposefully leave well enough alone! With a touch of pectin and sugar, our jam comes to a simmer and we pour jar upon jar by hand.

We recommend serving Hurley Farms’ Santa Rosa Plum jam atop your morning yogurt, or with a handful of granola! The jam (along with many other delectable flavors) is available for order on our website, please contact us by email or phone with any questions you may have!

Spring is for Strawberries

We’re ramping up our kitchen for the arrival of farm fresh strawberries!

Hurley Farms strawberry jam is made from fruit grown just down the street from our agricultural commercial kitchen and if I had better aim or perhaps a better arm I could call it a stone’s throw away!

Strawberries are a finicky crop, needing hot days and cool nights to produce sweet juicy fruit making California’s coast the perfect place to grow lots of delicious produce. In fact, California grows over 80% of the strawberries consumed by Americans.

This year has been an exceptional year, as the strawberries are sweet, plump, juicy gems which happen to be the perfect shade of crimson thanks to our beautifully consistent Napa Valley sunshine. Hand hulled and washed, these strawberries are given the star treatment around here!

While a strawberry may seem merely a child’s peanut butter accessory, here at Hurley Farms we view it as the portal to a simpler time, when jams were fresh and came from your grandmother’s kitchen…where you were lucky to get a sample right from the stove! We really enjoy Strawberry Jam day, as the aroma fills the kitchen and lingers around for hours after, reminding us to take time and savor the simple pleasures life has to offer.

With one spoonful, our jam will instantly taste sweet and tart, with a defined sun kissed strawberry flavor as if you’d bitten into a berry you’d picked yourself just moments before.

Click here to view our store, where you will find our Strawberry Jam, along with an assortment of other treats we have available for shipping!

Strawberry Fun Fact: Each seed on the outside of the strawberry is capable of growing into a plant, and there are about 200 seeds on every strawberry!

Strawberry Jam is our featured product for spring.  http://www.hurleyfarms.com