Category Archives: organic

food, health, organic

Almost Harvest Time

The summer is winding down, the Iowa State Fair begins this week, and before you know it school will be starting.   Must mean Aronia berry harvest is right around the corner.   The fields have gone from barren, to beautiful white blooms, to being filled with almost black berries now.  We’re taste testing and using the refractometer to know when the flavor is at its peak of perfection and nutrition.

Here at our farm, and at farms across Iowa, many Aronia growers will be hosting folks to pick their own berries this year.  Why should you?   If you look back through some of these posts, you will see many, many reasons to stock your freezer with these healthy little gems.   The studies are proving their benefits in so many health issues.

We eat them in so many ways.  The other night for example we had them in salad, salad dressing, and in a sauce to be used on the pork chops.  Why?  Of course they’re free here and we have them all year round, but let me tell you what happened when my husband went to the pain specialist recently.   Yes he has osteoarthritis terribly from several orthopedic surgeries (he should almost be bionic by now), but the pain doctor said for his age (82) he’s in really good shape compared to many and looked good.  Her question was why.  He said we’d been eating the Aronia berries for about the last 8 years.  She was going to get some.  It was proof enough for her.   He recently had blood work done again.  His results are always really good.  We know why.

This little lady is one of the other reasons why…

So watch here for times and dates to pick your own.   Spend a little time in nature, plan to bring the family, stock the freezer, we’ll teach you how to use them.  We’ll all be glad you did!

food, health, organic

Blooms, Blooms, Beautiful Blooms

Oh I wish you could smell these!

Or walk through the aisles and just listen to the birds chirp and the bees hum as they flit from place to place enjoying all the blossoms.

Watching that big, mean Rottweiler stop and smell the flowers is a real treat too.  Although, I couldn’t get a really good picture of him this year!  It’s just too funny watching him stop and sniff.  

Right now when they are so pretty you can overlook all the grass that is trying to grow under the plants and just enjoy the beautiful miracle that is happening turning those tiny little plants we planted 10 years ago into the beautiful floral beauties and then  a super nutritional berry right before our eyes.   Isn’t the power of nature magical!

food, health, organic

So Just What Do You Do With Those Berries?

I hear this question all the time.   Right now is the perfect time to answer that question.  Woody just had a hip replaced and I’m fighting a terrible cold after being with him in the hospital and having a weakened immune system, it was bound to catch me.   But, we know that our little purple powerhouse berries are anti-viral, so we load up with their vitamins and nutrients to push thru and recover.  We even boosted our intake prior to surgery!

Here’s now we use have been using them.  I like smoothies for breakfast and mine are always purple!  Woody prefers Aronia jelly or berries in oatmeal or pancakes.

For lunch, I just toss Aronia berries in chef salads.  Today I’m having them in my vegetable beef soup and salad.

We eat them in all sorts of baked goods as you can see on the recipe section.  The kids love them in the cookies, Woody loves the BananAronia bread or the Pear Aronia bread.

For dinner, I use them in meatloaf, meatballs, and in chili.  Often times I mix them with apples or pears to make a sauce for pork chops or chicken.  Sometimes you can even spice the sauces up with cayenne or creole seasonings for an interesting twist.

We also press them and drink the juice!  It’s good with a bit of 7-Up, Sparkling Water, Lemonade, Ginger Ale, or Woody’s been known to mix it in with a little Captain and Coke!  But to be fair, he puts some berries in with his coffee grounds occasionally too.  There are so many, many uses you just have to be creative!

food, health, organic

It’s a War Zone!

Saturday was a warm, almost Spring day in Central Iowa.  So what did we do?  Head out to the fields!

Last year our very first Aronia field yielded very little fruit.  It was originally planted almost 10 years ago.  Woody decided it was time for a pruning.  You see, Aronia Melanocarpa is native to the area and is very hardy perennial shrub.   Our son, Kendall, cut back the nearly 200 bushes from over 6′ to about 6-10″ inches.   We expect them to send up straight new shoots this spring.  They won’t have fruit, but they will be preparing for another several years of production.

Now we just have to clean up all those branches we cut off and raked to the aisles.  Meanwhile, it looks kind of like a war zone!

food, health, organic

Making a Switch and Stepping Up!

My brain is fried!  I have been doing some of this blogging stuff for quite a while and it always blows me away every time I make changes or begin something new.    But as I think back, I’ve got itwhipped.  After all for someone who began typing on a manual typewriter, transitioned to an electric, made copies with carbon paper and onion skins, was thrilled typewriters had a correction key, saw the advent of CPTs where you could preview what you typed on the screen and put it on a huge floppy disk to make changes before printing, marveled at the ease of a fax machine,  was fascinated with a flash drive, learned to use a desktop, laptop, tablet and smartphone, couldn’t believe I could make friends online and talk to them for free in Australia and England via Skype, hey, I got this!

As my husband so aptly says at the tender age of 81, “If you don’t learn and change, you die.”  He’s currently Googling things and talking to me over my shoulder while I import and export from one blog to another.  Ah the marvels of technology that have taken over our lives.

So as we begin a new phase of blogging and educating about the wonderful health benefits about Aronia Berries, bear with me as I get frustrated, make things way too hard, or just get tired:)

So as fried as my brain is, I had to share one final thing…if a service duck can go shopping in the mall during the Christmas season.  I can surely waddle through this!

food, health, organic

Whew! Settling in the Deep Freeze

What a better way to spend a frigid afternoon than catching up on a few things…  It’s good Aronia Berries need a cold season.  We’re sure getting it now!

After a long fall and exciting preparation for the holidays, things are finally settling down a bit and I can once again re-focus.  We’ve been busy making White Chocolate Aronia Fudge, Strawberry Aronia Fruit Spread all fall.  We hope those who received some as Christmas gifts thoroughly enjoyed theirs!  We’re always looking for new ways to use Aronia and trying to expand our market, and acquaint folks with the powerful purple berries! IMG_0003

We even spent a little time away from the farm in southwest Florida for the holidays with family and shared information about Aronia with folks at farmers’ markets there!  It was fun, they were sharing information about a fruit juice full of anti-oxidants and how good anti-oxidants were for you.  We told them we knew a little something about that!  Because Aronia is a “super food” with their high ORAC score.

food, health, organic, Uncategorized

Beautiful No Matter the Season

I always forget to take pictures out in the Aronia berry fields during the winter months.  It doesn’t seem possible this was just on Monday as we were going out for a walk and to do some sledding.  We knew the snow wouldn’t last, but the fields are beautiful, no matter what season.

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