Fall
Fruit Festivals
By Meg Olson
It’s hard to find a more bountiful celebration of
the autumn harvest than at Cloud Mountain Farm, where hundreds
of different fruits and nuts are all ripening at the foot
of Sumas Mountain.
“We encourage people to come and taste it all, decide
what they like,” said co-owner Cheryl Thornton. On
the last day of September and the first of October visitors
to the farm’s annual Fall Fruit Festival can taste
over 200 varieties of fruits that the farm grows: apples,
pears, Asian pears, grapes, kiwis, pumpkins.
The festival highlights all the ways to use a Northwest fall
harvest, with live musical accompaniment. There’s a
cider press and fresh apple cider to taste. At cooking demonstrations
and tastings learn about straight-forward jam-making or explore
rare fruit jellies and sauces. On long tables fresh samples
of the farms wares are available. What festival-goers like
they can buy, either in fruit or tree form.
“It dovetails into the nursery because it shows what
we have,” Thornton said. The nursery stock the farm
sells has been tested in the orchards and demonstration gardens
and they can offer advice to visitors about whether or not
a favorite apple will thrive in their location. “We’ve
worked a lot with Washington State University and we’ve
looked at what does really well here – and what doesn’t,” she
said. The nursery offers free workshops year-round on everything
from pruning to harvesting.
Cheryl and her husband Tom started Cloud Mountain Farm 27
years ago and the first Fall Fruit Festival was a way to
celebrate 10 years in business. “People really liked
it so we’ve kept expanding it,” she said.
The farm has also grown, adding varieties of fruits and nuts
and some offshoot ventures, such as daughter Julia’s
pumpkin patch, which sells sunflowers in September and pumpkins
and gourds in October. In the height of summer they sell
you-pick tomatoes, peppers and basil, and fruit and cider
throughout the fall. The nursery and demonstration gardens
are open all year and plants can also be ordered online at
www.cloudmountain.com.
What, where & when
Fall Fruit Festival – September 30 and October 1
Open Wednesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and
Sunday 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Cloud Mountain Farm
6906 Goodwin Road
Everson, WA
360/966-5859
More Fall Fruit Fests
in Whatcom County
BelleWood Acres:
231 Ten Mile Road in Lynden
Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
December through September
Tour acres of apples, pears, pumpkins and gourds and head
home with cider, dried apple chips, lavender and other loot
from the apple store.
Stoney Ridge Farm:
2092 Van Dyk Road in
Everson
Open Thursday through Saturday in October, 1 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Pick your own apples and pumpkins at the county’s largest
pumpkin patch and enjoy a month-long fall festival with a
corn maze, wagon rides and the justifiably famous caramel
apple pie.
Apple Creek Orchard
5367 Barr Road in Ferndale
Open 10 a.m. to dusk mid-September to November, weather permitting.
A full-service U-pick selling apples, tomatoes, pears and
honey, the farm provides everything from the bucket for picking
to the boxes to take your loot home.
Lynden Harvest Festival
October 14 and 15
All the fall classics are here: a hay maze, hayrides, scarecrow
contests. It’s also the place to buy the freshest fall
produce from dozens of local producers.
For info contact 354-5995 or www.lynden.org. |
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