The most wonderful time of the year is here at Bishop’s Orchards! School is out and Pick Your Own is OPEN!! Customers and staff are always eager to start, but we must wait for the PERFECT time to open the fields. Every year we start with strawberries, the shortest but most delicious season! Our berries are soft and delicate but packed with juicy flavor. Picking hours right now are sporadic, generally half days Monday-Friday and extended hours on weekends. We are hopeful that the season will last up to 4th of July, giving us a brief break before we open pick your own blueberries.
Blueberry picking is a longer season here on the farm. Just like our strawberries, the blueberries grow in several varieties that continuously ripen throughout the season. Pick your own blueberries generally starts around mid-July and remains open through late August. They have a longer availability for picking as we rotate picking areas from start to finish. The best thing about our blueberries is their sustainability. Whether you want to enjoy them fresh or frozen, these berries can last the longest. Pick them in bulk so you can freeze some to enjoy over the year, while baking a few fresh treats now.
While spending time with family and friends at Pick Your Own, make sure to share your experience with us socially online!! Tag your photos on Facebook and Instagram with “#PickBishops” and you might just see your photos featured on our site! What is the importance of a hashtag you might ask? Hashtags are used to categorize online content, making the detection of new or related content easy to do! At Bishop’s we enjoy using our customer’s materials as a way of promoting our family friendly experiences on the farm. Whether that be an image off Facebook, or a blog written about a CSA Share! If you see something you posted, reused by us, it was most likely found because of your hashtag!
During the summer, our PICK line can be used to stay informed on what season we are in and picking hours. Call 203-458-PICK for directions and prices. Before we know it, we will be opening peaches and raspberries in August! Visit us online for a calendar of seasons.
We started construction at the end of May and we are just a couple weeks away from opening! We are putting in walk-up windows, an outdoor patio, and we have some new equipment coming to offer some fun Ice Cream treats! For those of you who have been shopping with us the last month and have seen the construction happening first hand, thank you for your cooperation and patience as we have moved things around on you!
Now that it’s summer, it’s finally time to dust off that grill and get cooking! Make Bishop’s your one stop shop this year for all your grilling necessities! We supply everything that you need for your summer night BBQ. From fresh produce to hot dog and hamburger buns, we have you covered. We are excited to announce that our delicious Bishop’s own prepared grilled meals are back in the market! These grilled meals are sure to please, and come with everything that you need to make a wonderful dinner!
Grilled Steak Marinade – 
We have officially begun the start of our peak season here at Bishop’s Orchards. Spring represents growth on the farm, with an abundance of locally grown produce making its way into the farm market. We LOVE this time of year when picking fresh is easier than ever! Whether it be Bishop’s own produce, picking your own, or from other local farms, this time of year is only the beginning of what’s to come!
Right now, we have a limited supply of our popular Bishop’s Asparagus, which we expect to have for another three weeks. Also, our Herb Plants are continuously coming in from the greenhouse. Currently we have basil, flat parsley, dill, thyme, cilantro & rosemary. Soft grounds from all the rain, make this the perfect time for planting these plants in your own garden! Local spinach from Anderson Farms in Wethersfield is available in the farm market. This family farm has been around since 1856. They grow around thirty different fruits and vegetables that they distribute all over the state. Local tomatoes from March Farms in Bethlehem will be making their way into the farm market soon. March Farms has been around since 1915 with about 130 acres and dozens of greenhouses.
For those of you who like a refreshing Sparkling Wine, we are in the formulation and label approval process with TTB for a Strawberry Wine blend, made with our own strawberries. This will complement our other sparkling products, Rubus’ Nightfall, Sachem’s Twilight and Hard Ciders.
Finally, I would be remiss to reflect that work on legislative issues to support and protect agriculture have also kept me busy. As the final weeks of the CT Legislature’s 2019 session are upon us, we still have major work to fine tune HB 647 regarding liquor permits and sales, and not have other bills put undue burdens on small businesses, including farmers like us. Your support for our business is appreciated and supports our managing over 300 acres of land.
The most important time of year for a farmer is spring. Grounds have thawed out, rain has been pouring in, and temperatures are finally rising!! A lot is going on this time of year, but there is of course some obstacles to overcome. This year the rain has been even more than usual, creating difficult conditions on the farm as we are trying to get work done. With brief openings from the rain, we had some time to lay plant biodegradable plastic. Planting on biodegradable plastic makes weeds less of an issue, we can run drip irrigation tubing under it, is easy to transplant into, and it breaks down at the end of the season, sometimes before we would like. We have planted Carrots, Swiss Chard, Beets, and new to us, Spigiarello Broccoli. Weeds are a constant problem with direct seeded crops, so we need to be diligent and keep them under control. Plastic will be used for crops that can be started in the greenhouse and transplanted. Some crops don’t transplant well (see economics) so those are direct seeded.
A lot of change is happening in our greenhouse. We produce about 100,000 transplants out of the greenhouses. Our vegetable transplants are produced on a schedule so they go out in good, warm weather, usually after mid/late May to mid-June. However, not all of the transplants are for vegetable crops. Flowers are a big part of our transplants grown too. The bouquets sold in the store and for our CSA program are produced from these transplants. So, when you see a sign over tomatoes, squash, flowers or maybe cucamelons, that says “Bishop’s Own” you will know that it was started by seed on the farm, grown on the farm and traveled only a short distance to you at the store. Our greenhouses are getting quite full, with mother nature not much help. Even with the best planning, Mother Nature always manages to get the last say. This can make a full house even fuller when transplants are ready to go but excessive rain and cold tells you otherwise. Potted herbs were transplanted in March so that they could make their debut by the beginning of May. To keep the plants in the store until early September we seed every 10-14 days.
When we plant a new block of trees it will take three to four years to get a viable crop, so to help cover the cost we will, where we can, inter-plant Strawberries. Strawberries will only produce economically three or sometimes four years, so it is the perfect crop to plant every other row in a new peach block. When we finish harvesting the berries this June, we will take the pants out and plant grass in the middle. Strawberry blossoms are in and so far, it is looking to be a promising season. We hope to have our own strawberries in the farm market early to mid-June, and available for pick your own at the end of June.
We are at a disadvantage even more this Spring due to the short-term loss of Michaele, our small fruits and vegetable manager, who had back surgery last week. She will be a huge miss for us as we get going, but she is doing well and we hope to have her back in a month or so. I do hope she has that hearing checked though. She will be pleased that we got the first plants in the ground today. The ground was dry enough to work so we laid down some biodegradable plastic yesterday and put the peas in today. It doesn’t look like much but we put in 5900 plants by hand. What is really impressive is that three guys transplanted those in three hours. She will be pleased that we got the first plants in the ground last week. The ground was dry enough to work so we laid down some biodegradable plastic yesterday and put the peas in today. It doesn’t look like much but we put in 5900 plants by hand. What is really impressive is that three guys transplanted those in three hours (that’s not a typo). We are doing more grafting this year, and it is a time consuming job. There is a narrow window of time to get the grafting done. It starts when the sap begins to flow in the spring, but ends before the trees grow vegetation or green tissue, leaves, shoots, etc. After that point the grafts will not take because the sap flow becomes too heavy. The type of grafting we do is called bark grafting. The tree we want to graft onto is cut down as low as possible while leaving a couple of side branches, which are also cut to stubs. One limb must be left to allow for photosynthesis. Once the tree is cut, we insert the scion wood (shoots of the desired variety that we cut during the winter) of the variety we want to have. Each scion wood shoot is cut to three buds, wedged at the end, and then inserted into a cut made in the bark of the tree. The goal is to get the cambium layers – which are between the bark and the hardwood to match and the cells start to grow together. After the scion wood is inserted, we paint it with a tree paint to keep it from drying out.
We have always done a little grafting each year with a lot of success. Usually we do it to replace a variety we have too much of or to add variety to a pick-your-own block. To me, the key to success is not just the correct timing, but that we make sure the paint is thoroughly applied so the grafts do not dry out. Then, periodically, we must repeat paint applications. If we don’t, the paint will crack and allow for the graft to dry before it heals over. If the grafts dry out, the grafts will not take. These trees are what we would call “third leaf” which means they will be going into their third growing season. We will harvest some apples from those trees this year. We must be careful though, because over-cropping might cause some of the branches to break at the graft union. That union will continue to strengthen with time where breakage will no longer be an issue.
Sadly, our beloved Aristocrat pot pies were discontinued in 2018. The owner retired and closed down his business. We are sad to see him go, but we wish him well with his future endeavors. Aristocrat pot pies were a household name for many, and sold at multiple locations. They will be missed throughout the community. They were a wonderful company and made a truly amazing product. We know that it will be tough not having them in our market.