September 11, 2021

Berries and Wine

by Sarah

There are many new places we are discovering as we explore the local area. Of course we had to find the local berry places to pick from. Our strawberry plants produce in late summer and into fall at Crow Farm. In the beginning of spring we searched and found a place where we could pick strawberries.

Bush’s Fern View Farms

We found a place called Bush’s Fern View Farms that was packed with strawberries! They had silly little rules about where to pick that I didn’t love but their abundance of delicious ripe strawberries made up for it. We picked for 15 minutes and came home with 4 buckets worth!

Bear Fruit Farm & Detering Orchards

We also found a blueberry place about 40 minutes from our house called Bear Fruit Farm. It was quite a drive but they did have amazing sales on blueberries, wonderful picking, nice folks running it and next door there was a fairly good sized farm stand. The farm next door, Detering Orchards also had picking of various fruits. We found that their mustards were amazing!

Stillpoint Farm

About a week later we found yet another blueberry picking place, this one only 5 minutes from our house!! It’s called Stillpoint Farm and on Google it showed it is “permanently closed” so we hadn’t originally tried it. They were only open very limited hours but it was a super sweet place. In order to get to the small blueberry patch you were guided by the wonderful owner through a pasture of lamas and sheep (which as it turned out scared the wits out of our oldest). On our way out I was chatting with the owner about her sheep and she ended up giving us a whole feed bag full of extra wool they had!! It was incredibly generous of her and the girls and I will put it to good use! Abundance of blueberries, wool and a gem of a place found.

King Estate

Many of our Airbnb guests come to check out all the local vineyards near Crow Farm and yet we hadn’t visited many of them. We decided to change that by visiting King Estate just up the road. The name fits the bill as the property looks similar to a castle perched on a hill top among acres upon acres of grape vines. This vineyard is Biodynamic certified and because of this there are limits as to the types of machinery they can have on the grounds which leads them to use hundreds of rented sheep in the fall to weed their acres of vines. What a sight that must be!

The staff was very friendly and knowledgable and though their prices were a bit steep, their wine and snacks were good. It was such a stunning view from their patio where we sat!