Tag Archives: Aronia

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

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

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.

health, Uncategorized

Meet the Fogle’s in the Field

IMG_9765_smallIMG_9846_smallA few weeks ago when the Aronia berries were in full bloom, we decided to have a family photo taken.  Our family has grown, as have the berries, since we first began blogging about our Aronia plantation.

Those three little beauties in the top picture love to help Grandpa and Grandma.  Anytime they hear that mower turn on, the oldest ones know it’s time for a ride.  Sometimes we even hitch up a utility trailer and go for “wagon rides”.  The beautiful blonde was pictured helping plant berries when she was a toddler.  Now she’s nearing 7 and can explain all about Aronia berries.  The middle one would just as soon have a handful of purple and a stained face about harvest time.  She loves eating right off the bush, as does Abe, our Rottweiler.  Aggie, his little sidekick, hasn’t had the chance to enjoy Aronia except in dog treats.   Abe and Aggie are our “critter control”.  The whole family has helped plant berries and we rely on our son’s horticulture degree and farming experience for advice and muscle from time to time.

We recall the days spent planting those little 4″ twigs and wishing and wondering how they’d grow.  Now look at the beautiful bushes over 6′ tall in some areas.  As you walk between the rows, it’s like being in another place.  They are truly a beautiful addition to our property.  We wish you could have seen the beautiful flowers and smelled the aroma of Aronia in bloom along with us that evening.   Now we tend, wait, and watch for late August and a bumper crop of berries.

 

 

food, health

Aronia Berries Available in Stores

Earlier this month we placed Fogle’s Aronia Berries in several local grocery stores.  We are so excited to be able to make these healthy berries more accessible.  We’ve enjoyed greeting folks and talking Aronia at local stores as we share how tasty they can be.  So if you’re checking out our page here, we welcome you!  We hope you’ll investigate for yourself the benefits of Aronia, check out our Recipes page, and learn more about our favorite superfood.file-feb-21-5-21-12-pm

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Excited and Maybe Crazy?

Woody and I have made a commitment to be a part of the 2015 Warren County Farm Tour.  We are excited, a little anxious about the preparation and timing though.  We finish co-chairing the Midwest Aronia Association’s Iowa State Fair booth in the Ag Building on the 23rd of August and will host the Farm Tour on August 30.  Sometime around there we will be harvesting as well.  Crazy?  Maybe, but we feel strongly folks need to know about the benefits of the Aronia berry.  There is all kinds of research being done on how to use these very-high antioxidant berries.  The article below explains a little bit about the excitement.

Aronia (aka Chokeberries) – the Next Super food for Athletes?

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A Little Bit About What I Do In My Spare Time…

Okay, I have to add this…you’ll see why if you get to the third paragraph.  Unfortunately we weren’t able to attend.  (It was the same week as Woody’s heart procedure, but we were there in thought.)

Midwest Aronia Association 5th Annual Conference

“Let’s Get Growing” Moline, Illinois  March 21, 2015

Midwest Aronia Association held their 2015 conference in Moline, Illinois, March 19-21. This annual Midwest event is the largest gathering of Aronia growers in the nation, drawing speakers and attendees from across the United States, as well as internationally, to network, learn and share information about the Super Fruit, Aronia berry.  Aronia has been introduced in recent years as a value-added sustainably grown crop, and researchers continue to discover the numerous health benefits of the dark purple berry.

The Midwest Aronia Association is a non-profit group whose focus is education concerning Aronia. Main goals include assisting growers, and re-establishing Aronia as a healthy staple in modern diets by introducing Aronia berries to consumers. With grower-members throughout the United States and Canada, there is growing focus on local and regional marketability as well as expanding domestic market growth and development of the Aronia industry.

With approximately 150 attendees, events included management practices; marketing and business development; labeling, processing and Regional Chapter development. The conference opened with a well-received Recipe Contest for which participants contributed an Aronia-based food and recipe for judging and eventual inclusion in an Aronia Cookbook with a Harvest Season 2015 targeted publication date.  Additional Aronia recipes will be accepted throughout April.  Other topics included site preparation, harvesting, soil nutrition and cultural management, storm and pest damage mitigation, irrigation, crop insurance, processing, product development and marketing.  The Aronia Promoter of the Year award was given to Peggy Fogle for her tireless efforts in organizing and staffing the successful Iowa State Fair MAA booth and other volunteer activities.  Dr. Terry Wahls whose research on nutrition in the study of traumatic brain injury and Multiple Sclerosis delivered the keynote address after the annual banquet.

The MAA annual business meeting and board member elections were held during the conference. 10 officers/committee chairs were retained or elected to the board. For more information about Aronia and the MAA, please visit www.midwestaronia.org

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What a Summer!

We had such high hopes for our crop this year and were so excited for the changes we were making to our farm.  Yet another lesson in patience.

We ordered our Weed Badger in early April and hoped to be ready to till around the plants in May.  I should never have trusted and sold the little riding mower that went between the small plants.  The weed badger showed up last week!  But it is going to be awesome.  We need some practice with it, but it will do the job, we’re just set back a year.

On June 17th while mowing we noticed all kinds of damaged to the berry bushes.  We couldn’t decide if the heavy winds the night before had damaged our plants or just what had happened.  Turns out it was the 17-year cicada emergence.  They really did a number on us.  The females bury their eggs into the small stems of plants.  Well our place is very wooded and was 17 years ago too, so we had a terrible infestation.  It was like walking on crunchy shells everywhere in our fields.  Turns out they were a problem.  We had lots of branches die and many more erupted and weakened so they did not support all the berry production.  Our crop suffered dramatically and probably will next year too.  We’re thankful it’s only every 17 years!

Cicada Damaged Bush
Cicada Damaged Bush
Cicada Damaged Branch
Cicada Damaged Branch

June 16th our Horizon Building arrived after a LOT of dirt work that was done, thanks to our son.   The wonderful Amish crew had the building up in a week, mostly.  It rained and rained all summer and the inside was muddy, our granddaughter loved mud stomping inside!  The floor was finally poured (in the rain) August 27th.  But we have a place to put all the equipment for winter storage and it’s wonderful.

Mudstomping Inside the Building
Mudstomping Inside the Building

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Through all the rain, weeds, and cicada damage, we’ve been so impressed at how hardy these plants are.  Plants we put in the ground two years ago have really thrived despite the conditions they had to deal with this year.  That field was neglected this summer with all the rain and the lack of a good way to mow between the plants and the cicada damage as well, but they look really good.

We keep believing the plants will be able to produce a nice crop for us.  We have had friends with excellent yields.  Meanwhile, we keep finding new ways to enjoy them.

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A New Deere in the Field

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A New Deere in the Field

After 31 years with the same John Deere, Woody has said hello to a new Deere to graze in the fields. Abe will not be chasing this one away. It is necessary to do the work the old Deere, the Ex-Mark and Woody and I have been doing by hand. Thanks to Kendall, we’ll be outfitting it to weed the berries! We’re so excited. It has already made loading things around here so much easier!