Farmers Market: Chosen Harvest Orchard, Princeton
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By Michael McHale/Lincoln Journal Star
The owners of Chosen Harvest Orchards have a tip for anyone who bites into their fruit: Lean over.
The peaches and plums tend to be packed with juice. So do the apples and nectarines.
Mark and Catherine Hier of Princeton have been selling fresh fruit since 2004, when they took over a small orchard about 15 miles south of Lincoln. They sell in Princeton during the week and at the Old Cheney Road Farmers Market on Sundays.
The fruit is picked just hours before it’s sold, and customers usually leave with sticky fingers.
"We pick everything ripe," Catherine said. "The nutrition goes into the fruit when it ripens. The flavor does, too."
And so does the juice, which leaves the inside of the fruit primed to strike taste buds.
When the Hiers took over the farm four years ago, they knew it came with about 300 small trees. But they didn't know much about fruit.
"I have a farming background," Mark said. "But an orchard was a new adventure for us. We learned as we went along."
It didn't take long to figure out what worked. Ripe fruit had a distinct flavor. It tastes tangy and sweet — nothing like what they found in stores.
So they let everything grow. After the fruit ripened, they harvested it.
The Hiers have it down to a science these days. They own more than 800 trees grown from seeds from a company in Missouri. They plant in April to make sure a variety of peaches, plums and nectarines are ready by late July. The apples usually arrive by mid-August.
When the plums start to take on a bright red-pinkish hue, they're ready to be picked. And when nectarines begin falling, it’s time to collect them.
Catherine scours the rows of trees just squeezing fruit, and those that feel a bit spongy go into a box.
Then it's off to the market — either in Princeton where they have a stand from 4:30 to 7 p.m. during weeknights, or to the Old Cheney Road Farmers Market on Sundays.
"We don't even have a big refrigerator to store everything in," Catherine said."It goes straight from the tree to the truck."
It's different from store-bought fruit, Mark said, which is picked early in the growing stage to be shipped and stored at grocery outlets. Ripe fruit isn't fit for shelves, as it spoils after a few days.
But if people eat up quickly, they’ll be licking their fingers for a while.
"We want to sell something that's good," Mark said."If you pick it green, you're not going to get that."
The Hiers sell all their fruit for $2 per pound, or $1.50 a pound for bulk sizes. They insist they don't want any of the credit, explaining repeatedly: "God makes the fruit. We just sell it."
But as long as customers come back, they’ll keep feeding them.
And they’ll have a towel on hand just in case.
Here’s a recipe from bakingbites.com to put fresh peaches to good use:
Peach Cobbler
6-7 ripe peaches, peeled, pitted and sliced
¼ cup honey, divided
½ cup sugar
½ cup milk
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon of salt
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toss peaches with 2 tablespoons of honey and put into a baking dish. In a large bowl, whisk remaining 2 tablespoons of honey, sugar, milk, melted butter, vanilla extract and egg until smooth. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt on top of sugar mixture and stir until flour streaks are gone. Drop batter in lumps on top of peaches. Bake for about 35 minutes until topping is golden brown.
Reach Michael McHale at 473-7254 or mmchale@journalstar.com
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