Now through May by Appointment:  Fruit Plant Sale by our friend Gina at Old Orchard Farm, 1 Old Orchard Road in Blairstown (Hardwick) NJ

Gina Barkovitch can be reached at 908-362-5980 or 908-227-4170 polaritygina@hotmail.com

 Grow your own delicious fruit at home!   Come to our spring plant sale now through May for fruit trees, berry bushes, strawberries and asparagus.   Some antique varieties, but all plants chosen for best growing conditions in this New Jersey bio-region, along with wonderful flavors, disease resistance and winter hardiness.   

 Educational & Social Network: Some interesting things we’ve done or shared how to do with others at the farm include:

Food preservation techniques: canning, dehydrating, fermenting, storage

Raising chickens and ducks, small-scale poultry processing

Wheat/rye planting, harvesting, hand threshing, winnowing, and grinding grain  (we called it “Field to Flour in a Day”)

Preparing various medicines from herbs – tinctures, salves, infused oils and vinegars

Building, baking, dehydrating and smoking food in outdoor masonry wood-fired oven

Sheep’s wool processing, needle and wet-felting, wool-dying, spinning into yarn

Making wool-covered soaps, woolen slippers and wall-hanging framed woolen murals

Wild-food foraging for edible greens, flowers and root crops

Making cordage and baskets from the landscape

Homemade breads and pizza doughs, no-knead methods

Beginner home-made winemaking from yeast, sugar and local fruit

Painting various wall murals of farm and nature scenes

Soapmaking from wood-ash (lye) and other basic primitive skills and preparedness

Currently raising two hoop houses for growing organic vegetables & seedlings

Currently building a traveling wood-fired sauna lined in white cedar

Planning hugelkultur raised beds for growing polyculture edibles, medicinals and pollinators

Expanding last year’s orchard to include interplantings of compatible foods and herbs to create a diverse, healthy regenerative food-scape with multiple functions (permaculture principles)

 An email listing is available referencing highly skilled individuals and businesses (friends of the farm) offering sustainable resources such as green-roof building, energy efficiency home audits, children’s camps, organic garlic, honey, and vegetable seedlings for sale, yoga classes, wild food walks, furniture & raised bed building, garden design with site evaluation and much, much more.