A special thank you to Andrea Fox who provided this month’s field trip report:
On Sunday, April 19th, the Brazos Locavores took their monthly field trip to King’s Orchard, a 40 acre u-pick berry farm located in Todd Mission, TX, just south of Plantersville. King’s Orchard has been in business for 28 years and is named after King George, the proprietor of the Texas Renaissance Festival that is held every year on adjacent property. The orchard offers a variety of fruits, berries, vegetables and cut flowers for retail picking.
While it’s far from renaissance fair season, strawberry season is upon us, and that was the primary reason for our visit. According to their website, King’s Orchard has six acres of strawberries in production – approximately 105,000 plants conveniently arranged in (96) five hundred foot rows… that’s nine miles of berries to choose from! New strawberries are planted every October in extra high raised beds (approximately 18 inches high x three feet wide) and covered with black plastic mulch, allowing them to produce approximately 50,000 pounds of fruit seasonally (February-May). Karen, our tour hostess, told us that strawberry plants have five rounds of blooms per season. As we picked, you saw everything from bloom to fruit, with a variety of ripeness in-between. The recent rains made the ripe fruit a bit soft, but we were able to come away with several pounds of the finest berries we could find. Freshly picked berries should last about four to seven days. The orchard recommends to keep them in the refrigerator in a shallow layer (or in the box you picked them in), very loosely covered, and to only wash them prior to eating as water facilitates the ripening process. For those that aren’t content enough to eat them as-is, their website offers several recipes to highlight the flavors of the season.
A big thanks to King’s Orchard for hosting our group. Keep an eye on their website for notifications of blackberry, blueberry, and fig picking time. And thanks also to those who came out for the pre-picking picnic, tour and strawberry harvest. Be sure to mark your calendars for May 17 when the Brazos Locavores visit Long Bean Farm (details soon).
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