Hi There!

 

We would love to see you on the farm.
On Sunday May 5th from 10:00 AM until noon join us for a free tour!
Also, come the night before, Saturday May 4th, to camp out under the stars and wake to birdsong among the trees in the orchard.
Bring your own picnic to enjoy in the orchard after the tour on Sunday!

 

Sunday morning come and walk the orchard with your fourth generation fruit grower, Steve Ela.

 

Steve is like your personal fruit professor for teaching you what it takes to grow delicious organic fruit in Colorado.

You could also make a weekend of it. Come over on Saturday and check out the:

Adair Ela putting out home-made luminarias along the top of the farm’s encircling rock wall Christmas Eve.

When we think of a new year we think of new beginnings, of light or maybe hope refreshed, of energy reinvigorated. What is the most powerful marker of those things, and when is it a new year?

‘a single luminaria, one of 127 this year, casting a gentle light onto the snow around it’

Can you imagine if we turned off the power grid and extinguished all our heating throughout our society in the dead of the solstice (usually around December 21) night? The return of light would certainly become as notable in modern society as it was/is in pre-industrial ones.

In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice is the longest night/shortest day of the year. Some peoples here used to extinguish all their fires on the night of the winter solstice, then relight them from scratch as a new beginning.

On the farm we really see this. Following the solstice, as the sun starts its return to longer days, the amount of solar energy coming our way starts coming back too (yay!). All the fruit trees depend on sunlight for their lives and for their ability to produce sugars in their fruit. Our farm gets 70%-80% of the electrical energy we use from solar panels. Does the new year begin with the solar turn-around of the winter Solstice?

Luminarias line the waist – high stacked rock wall on each side of the entrance to Ela Family Farms.

There are other ways to think of it though. Although the sunlight is returning, we are just beginning our winter season. It’s a time many of us would like to just curl up by a fire and rest. The trees, too, need to rest. In fact, they must accumulate a certain number of Chill Units, or chill hours (hours between 32° – 45°F) before they will emerge from dormancy and set fruit. That is certainly not a predictable calendar date – it depends entirely on the weather.

The almost-full moon shines down on an old apple orchard at Ela Family Farms. Luminarias illuminate the length of the bordering dry-stacked rock wall.

So is the new year Chill Unit or weather related? Does the new year begin when the fruit trees emerge from dormancy, perhaps? Or maybe when blooms emerge? Or something else?

This winter the full moon occurred just a few days after the solstice. So we have a kind of new lunar year, though the Chinese lunar new year isn’t until the start of February. And Diwali, the festival of lights in the Hindu calendar which combines lunar and solar calendars, marks the triumph of light over darkness with the new year starting the following day, but occurs around the start of November. And of course there’s the tradition of counting down the last moments of December 31 to a grand finale of clinking glasses and maybe fireworks ushering in a new calendar year.

Steve distributing luminarias along the rock wall

Is the new year related to solstices or to moon cycles? To a calendar we can mark with vows and parties? Each year Steve makes candles which we use for a light display on Christmas Eve, lining the dry-stacked rock wall which surrounds a big part of our farm with luminarias which burn well into the night. That is an annual ritual of quiet, and of time coming together and sharing beauty. It certainly marks a turning point for us. It has the feeling of closure, and of something renewed. Maybe this is our new year.

Spring on the farm is a glorious time, especially this year after a winter with such an astounding snowpack. Verdant green overflows every nook and cranny – such a contrast to the past couple dry years. Inevitably the new life invokes contemplations of the long line of life and years which have come before. Some aspects feel like kindness. Some are bittersweet. In all aspects, spring is a conduit of connection. We were especially surprised this spring by a reach-out for connection from our local community. We were invited into a production called Story Share – a superbly executed evening of integrated arts and community. Strikingly, the fully packed house got to share glimpses into the lives of 4 sets of folks (one of which was us :0 ). Taking the time to hear each other’s stories, and then to see those stories reflected back through the lenses of sculpture, poetry, prose, music, and live improv theater was magical. The perspective shifting set up a resonance of connection which is hard to convey, yet was profound.

We’d like to take a stab at sharing at least a part of it, because you are part of our community too. And because the echoes of sharing back and forth bring our hearts alive.

Below, you’ll find a sample of the writing and sculpture derived from our story – that of family generations growing fruit. From the Story Share 2023 night hosted by the Blue Sage Center for the Arts:

Generations of fruit growing captured in sculptural form by local artists Ryan Strand and Nina Clouse

GLORIOUS

By Michael Cooper @michaelcoopermusicandlyrics

Story Share 2023 – Ela Farms 

GRANDFATHER

“If we sell you a two-worm apple and it’s only got one
Bring it back – and we’ll give you one with two!
We stand behind the fruit we grow:
We’ll make it right if it’s not so!”

WORM

I am the worm
Inside of the apple
The apple from Ela Farms.

I peel a piece
And burrow in
To feel alive
Beneath the skin

I steal a bite
Reveal a seed
The sweetest crunch
Is guaranteed.

My meal amounts to
So much more:
The heart inside
The apple core.

FARMER

His reasons for coming back?

“To raise kids in a place where they can jump on bike
Play in the dirt
Dig a hole
Pick a peach
Walk outside and look up at the mountains
Get your hands dirty, feel things
(Even though he doesn’t do that as much as he used to anymore, because he’s in the office a lot…)

What would she miss?

“I’d miss the cascade of growth
The profusion of blooms in the spring
And watching them – burst
And then get tiny, into little, tiny fruits that start to grow
And then those get picked
And the leaves change
And they fall…
And the trees are bare
I love that.”

CUSTOMER

I tried a tablespoon of Ela Farms applesauce this afternoon:
And it was glorious.
Not too sweet. Smooth. Velvety.

“There is a satisfaction
Of taking sunlight and water
And turning it into really good fruit.”

FARM

Codling moth netting extends as far as the eye can see, like generations:
Long, long, long rows of trees, completely covered in continuous sheets
Diaphanous ghosts, scaring away the worms, so they can’t get into the apples
Mother Nature is dynamic.
Organic farming is dynamic.
There is so much heart.
Every morning, a mediation, a prayer.
Thank you, grandmother bee.
Thank you, grandfather sky.

Glorious.

Shirley’s hands are at the root of everything we are as a family and as a farm. We are sad to share the news that she passed away this January. Her consistent message of, “Be who you are” shared her soul. She brought heart and vitality to everything she did, a part of farm operations throughout the entirety of her life.

She’d joke and smile while pitting prunes or taking grapes off the stem even in the years when her sight had faded to seeing only blurs of light. In her last days she told us over and over again, “Don’t be sad. Be happy. I’ve had a beautiful life and I’ve been lucky. I’m ready. Don’t be sad. If you feel a breeze on your cheek maybe that’ll be me. I’ll get to be part of everything.” She has been part of so much. It’s kind of lovely that her greatest sense of peace came from the idea of getting to be part of even more of everything.

Shirley Phillips Ela passed away at age 98 on January 18, 2023. She passed away in a sunny
room of her own home overlooking the orchards, surrounded by family and in the tender,
thoughtful care of Hope West Hospice. She was born July 15, 1924, the third of four children of Nelson N. and Lois Burns Phillips. Her husband of 70 years, Judge William M. Ela, predeceased her in 2016. She is survived by her children, Beth Wilkens (Jeffrey) of Rochester, NY, Wendell (Karen Kerr) of Perth, Australia, Thomas of Grand Junction, Daniel Schultz-Ela (Lynea) of Hotchkiss, and Steven (Regan Choi) of Hotchkiss, seven grandchildren, and seven great grandchildren. Two sisters and her brother, Dean Phillips (Irene), predeceased her.

She attended grade school in Clifton, and graduated valedictorian of Grand Junction High School in 1941. During World War II she was a volunteer Red Cross nurse’s aid at St. Mary’s Hospital, earned her A.A. at Mesa Junior College, and worked in engineering at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle before returning to finish her B.A. at University of Colorado. Upon her marriage, they moved to Cambridge, MA where she worked as a professional typist supporting Bill as he earned his law degree at Harvard. They returned to Grand Junction in 1949, where she played French Horn in the symphony, received the Lioness of the Year Award, and was a charter member of the League of Women Voters. She was President of the Mesa County Community Foundation, served on the Colorado State Water Quality Control Commission, was a board member of the Western Colorado Community Foundation, helped expand Hope West to Delta County, and was a long-time member of PEO and Reviewers Club.

Her life was deeply rooted in fruit farming. She worked closely with her father and brother with family orchards near Clifton until 1996 when Bill and Shirley moved to newly purchased orchards near Hotchkiss, where she and her son built Ela Family Farms until her passing.

She  was passionate to the end about agriculture and the land, and in 2010 received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Horticulture from the Western Colorado Horticultural Society.

In her inimitable fashion, she wrote for her own obituary, “She cared deeply about her family, but could also be a pain in the neck and hard taskmaster, worked her children too hard, bossed her husband around, and liked to argue too much at times. So, generally, good life and good riddance.” Notwithstanding her own words, she will be greatly missed.

Here is a link to a StoryCorp interview with Shirley, Steve, and Bill from 2009.

Shirley Ela, Wiliam Ela, and Steve Ela

Toast in the Orchard with Shirley Ela and her sons, Dan (left) and Tom (right)

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Full Pear Bin in the Orchard

As you all know, peak fruit season is already very busy on the farm, but last week was a notable scramble. Everyone on the farm went out to pick regardless of their usual job description, and put in extra hours to pick fruit before the freeze. We unfortunately only had time for getting to the bottom half of many of our trees.

All that effort paid off though. Our cooler is loaded with pears. We have apple favorites including Goldrush & Empire for CSAs.

Elephant Heart Plum

We also saved some our plum favorites including Italian and Elephant Heart, and many of our specialty Heirloom varieties like Esopus Spitzenburg, Pitmaston Pineapple, and Cox’s Orange Pippin. Amazingly, there were even some small blocks of trees whose apples made it through the freeze! (If they are close to mature and the natural sugar content is high, that lowers the freezing point of the juice in the apple.)

Frozen Braeburn Apple

Harrow Sweet Pear

Sadly the Braeburns and Fujis did not survive the cold. Being late season apples in an already late- maturing season, in that early freeze their sugar content just wasn’t high enough to see them through.

As they freeze, the cells can rupture and we’re left with  apple skins, filled with juice hanging on the tree. Over the course of this week they have oozed apple sap and become self-fermenting juice on the trees. As they wither and fall, at least it will be a nutrient return to the soil!

Spiced Pear Old Fashioned

It is with a heavy heart that we are sharing this news.

Do you remember as kids we used to hide and then jump out at someone just to scare the tar out of them? Sometimes they laughed and sometimes they weren’t so happy… 

Well, Mother Nature likes to do that to us. She jumps out at us and sometimes we come out laughing, wondering how we got through a cold night. Sometimes Mother Nature exerts the upper hand and we aren’t so happy. This is one of those times.

Last October we had the coldest night we have ever seen in October. The temperature bottomed out at three degrees.  Before that, our October temperatures had been unseasonably warm. Our trees had no chance to get used to the cold or to harden off. The sudden freeze took them by surprise. Mother Nature’s jump scare got them. The immediate effect was seeing dead leaves hanging on the branches, denying the trees their normal chance to move nutrients from the leaves to the tree. But the full impact wasn’t obvious at first. Deep damage takes time to show, so we waited, hoping for the best, scared to know what might be the worst.

Steve & Will Ela heading out into the orchards to look at freeze damage.

Gathering up our determination, we finally walked around last week and looked at the fruit buds and the trees. It was a devastating walk.

From what we can tell, our three acres of mature cherry trees are completely dead. Our four acres of one year old peach trees are dead or severely injured. Same for two year old peach trees. Our three year old peach trees, that are just starting to fruit, are hurt but maybe alive. Older peach trees are alive, but most branches smaller than your thumb are dead. We are likely to lose many mature plum trees. Pear trees are alive with some possible viable fruit buds, but many buds are dead. Apple trees are alive and some seem to have viable buds.

Clipping the smallest branches first, working ever lower on the tree hoping to find live wood.

We are concerned. All the surviving trees have been stressed and will be extra vulnerable to diseases. Spring freezes and any drought this summer will stress them further. For stone fruits our normal pruning will be completely different and very sad this year.

Our crop for this coming summer is drastically reduced.  How many peaches will we pick from the older damaged trees?  Pears were badly hurt but maybe some will fruit? Can we keep our fingers crossed for apples? And, we still have to navigate our “normal” frost season meaning more of any currently surviving buds may die.

Shirley Ela, 96, walks 1/4 mile through the orchard to get to the farm office most days. She said that there was a similar fall freeze with similar fruit damage in 1962. This is what perseverance looks like.

You are our community, understanding that extreme crop years like this are part of the bumpy farming road. You all know the many benefits of eating locally grown food, and you’re likely among the folks who dedicate a portion of your food dollars to this. 

So, that’s the hard news.

We are asking you to extend the dynamic flexibility you’ve always shown, and do three things:

1) Consider participating in the farm in new ways – looking for the bright side of having more time when there’s little fruit to harvest we are offering a bunch of virtual learning and on-farm experiences this year including:
Lunch with a Farmer Live Question & Answer
Custom Individualized Tours/Experiences
Adopt a Tree (or Three!)

2) Join us when you can at farmers markets this year. We will still be bringing whatever fruit makes it to bloom and then through spring frosts.

3) Hold your breath with us, ready to jump into CSAs again next year. Because of our deep uncertainty about the crop, we are not confident that we can fulfill CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and so are not going to be offering fruit shares this year.

We want to honor your part in our farm.
We hope you will understand. Sometimes we laugh, and sometimes we cry. We hope you will stay with us for a better year. 

We love apples. Our kids eat scads of them – Gala, Golden Supreme, Jonagold, Esopus Spitzenburg, Goldrush, Pitmaston’s Pineapple – and even more. We play in the orchards and even among the bins of fresh-picked apples, sample variety tastes at farmers’ markets for everyone who’s even mildly adventuresome, and think these apples actually do taste different, and better, than what almost everyone thinks when they hear “apple” these days.

So check this out. What a delight! Even more reason to enjoy fresh, organic, Colorado grown apples 🙂
Another Reason to Eat Organic — Organic Apples Contain More Diverse, Healthier Bacteria than Conventional
“Healthy, diverse colonies of gut bacteria can help prevent and treat many common diseases, and research on mice has linked improved gut health to protection against some cancers.”

Apples at market this weekend? Gala! And for CSA members,  Golden Supreme. Sneak peek to the next week? Possibilities include: Macintosh, Jonathan, and Swiss Gourmet. Also coming to market this weekend: late season Peaches, Black Amber and Fortune Plums, Bartlett Pears, and Heirloom Tomatoes!

Sample apples for tasting at a farmers’ market.

(more…)

It’s time to be Free(stone)! The peaches so many have been asking for – freestones which slip easily off the pit – are ripe, ready and coming to market this weekend! Have fun with simple farm-style breakfasts or elegant combination dishes. We’ll have golden Shiro Plums, purple Santa Rosa Plums and multicolored Heirloom Tomatoes to complement the peaches. (All certified Organic, of course) Come meet us at a farmers’ market, then let your taste buds run wild! If you just can’t stand it and want to share the Colorado goodness, check out our peach gift packs.

PEACHES * OATS * CREAM * CINNAMON * MAPLE SYRUP

#simpleliving #organicfruit #eatlocal

Union Station Farmers’ Market map
Cherry Creek Farmers’ Market map
Old South Pearl St. Farmers’ Market map
Stapleton Farmers’ Market map
Golden Farmers’ Market map
Longmont Farmers’ Market map
Boulder Farmers’ Market map
City Park Esplanade Farmers’ Market map
Ft. Collins Old Town Farmers’ Market map

4 eggs, 2 cups sugar,  1 can evaporated milk, 1 pint cream, 3-4 cups mashed peaches (makes 1 gallon of ice cream)

Summer is hot and our peaches and cherries are so juicy you can’t keep your chin clean. Eat them fresh and chilled or take it one step further to the most scrumptious frozen concoctions. Here you see farmer Steve Ela making homemade peach ice cream under the grape Arbor.

Also featured is a cherry brain freeze made from fresh organic cherries, whipping cream, a dash of almond extract, and just a spoonful or two of Maple syrup. Blend them together until it’s a light and fluffy mixture and freeze them in your favorite mold. In this case a brain! Top it off with a drizzled chocolate shell and you’ve got a no-sugar-added low carb summer sensation.

You can find this all organic fruit at our farm stands this weekend in Ft. Collins, Longmont, Boulder, Denver Union Station, City Park, Stapleton Esplanade, Old South Pearl St,  Golden, and Cherry Creek (both this weekend and on Wednesday).

Come check out the 1st peaches of the season – Earlistar – and the sweetest of sweet cherries!

photo credit Brigid McAuliffe

We were laughing in the kitchen the other day, standing together at the sink pitting cherries. Shirley Ela was recalling the days of hairpins, when practically all ladies had and used them, and when they were the pitting tool of choice. Back in the Depression era, people were so careful to waste nothing, and no one bought anything unnecessary. We were laughing about how much faster and easier it is now, to pit the cherries with this scissors-type tool which just cradles a cherry and punches the pit out.

This weekend join us in sharing the immense bounty of cherries! Somehow they are getting even darker, richer, & juicier. They are fabulous.

In a surprise addition (thanks wet cool spring!) we are bringing the seldom seen Ela Family Farms silver-dollar-size apricots to Denver area markets. Sneak in early for a taste 🙂

The story of our food, and taking time for it, adds a richness to our daily lives. In that vein we’d like to share a story which you, as supporters of our farm, are a part of. Have you heard of Slow Food Nations? Slow Food is a global, grassroots organization, founded in 1989 to prevent the disappearance of local food cultures and traditions, counteract the rise of fast life and combat people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from and how our food choices affect the world around us. We participate in this sustainability movement and in your support, so do you.

There’s an event open to all this weekend – we’ll be there! If you’d like to connect with farmers, foodies and families please join us in Larimer Square! We will be part of the Panels and Workshops on Saturday noon-2, part of the Taste Marketplace Sunday afternoon, and collaborating in Meet Your Makers with Haykin Family Cider on Sunday from 4-5. Our Esopus Spitzenburg apple (grown by Thomas Jefferson) is even included in their Ark of Taste!

photo credit Brigid McAuliffe

photo credit Brigid McAuliffe

You’ve waited so patiently, waited so long…
Answer the call – cherries’ siren song!

Come visit us at a farmers’ market today or tomorrow
Come early, buy cherries, avoid sweet sorrow!

What a fabulous farm tour weekend! The weather couldn’t have been more beautiful, the food was exquisite, and the company was thoroughly enjoyable. Such a group of interesting people!  Thank you to everyone who added their voices and their interests.  Long standing friends, new friends, people from nearby, and people from as far away as Portland Oregon joined us in a supremely fresh locavores’ feast created by the dynamic Forage Sisters.

Saturday we visited a neighboring winery, a distillery, and a farmstead cheese maker, then dined in the orchard.  Folks camping in the orchard stayed late for S’mores around a campfire.  Sunday morning was bright and clear for the tour of our farm. There were fabulously insightful questions! Folks aged 2 to well-experienced in life walked with us seeing everything about how the fruit is grown, and the part each person plays in making the farm an organic whole.

For everyone who didn’t make it out this year, we hope you’ll have the opportunity to join us in a year to come. Enjoy a few pictures!

Whether the weather is good 😉 WOW – it’s still snowing on the hills right above us – what a spring! Last year all the snow and runoff were completely gone from even the tops of the peaks by now. We were already heading into short water rations and biting our nails. Such a different scene surrounds us this season. Flowers are blooming in rare profusion. The trees are taking full advantage of all these storms. Spring temperatures have turned out benign and fruit is clustered so densely on the trees we are having to thin it! You can experience that fruit from two sides – the farm (seeing) and the CSA (eating). Jump into Summer with us! Farm Tour 2019 June 8-9 Curious? Would you like to see all that fruit & beauty? Come to our annual farm tour on the weekend of June 8-9. Our walk around, ask questions, see how we do things, free farm tour starts at 10 a.m. on the 9th. If you have ever wondered how fruit gets from bloom to what you buy at the markets, we cover all that. We walk and talk and look at pruning, grafting, thinning, cover crops, pest control, fertility, picking, packing, and whatever else comes to mind. Best of all, we make it a weekend excursion by combining our farm tour with other free tours of wineries, a cheesery, and distillery. And, to top it off, we are offering dinner and lunch in our orchard (paid RSVP required). Plus the North Fork Valley is part of the Colorado Creative Corridor, we have great dark skies for star viewing at night, and we are right next to the North Rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

CSA pick-of-the-week fruit shares! This is also the time of year to sign up for our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares. We have our Peak Season and Canning shares open for purchase now and will soon be opening our Early Season shares. CSA members pay now and then receive fruit each week (Peak and Early Season shares) at one of our farmers markets. We give you the pick of the crop for that week – while what we deliver varies from year to year, a list of what we expect to deliver is given on our website for each delivery site. We will have our shares available for purchase until June 15. Spring Renewal Things are crazy busy for our crew on the farm. Rhubarb season is winding down, heirloom tomatoes are in the process of being transplanted and every other spare moment is dedicated to getting the crop properly thinned. And, we just redesigned our website, so check out our new look. We hope to see you on the farm tour or at the markets!