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Lawrence Co. offers only the best
Apple Castle
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Lyle Johnston, owner of Apple Castle near New Castle looks at peaches on his farm 7-10-2008. He is the 5th generation of Johnstons to run the farm which features orchards sweet corn and blueberries.
Here’s your guide to fresh taste.
NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Making a cherry pie isn’t that exciting with the canned stuff you get at the supermarket.
That heavy, syrupy glop could sour even the biggest cherry pie fanatic after awhile.
But where do you find fresh pie cherries? If you can find them, who wants to take the time to pit them?
You can find them at a family-owned store called Apple Castle on Pa. Route 18 six miles north of New Castle, and the pitting is a surprisingly easy task. Just squeeze the cherries or rip into the tops of them and pull, and the pits come right out. It’s still going to take longer than opening the can and plopping that blob of goop into the pie shell, but the reward is a made-from-scratch, fresh-cherry pie that is sweet and extraordinarily tart at the same time — and sooo tasty.
We go for processed convenience so often that sometimes, it’s hard to remember what fresh tastes like. In Lawrence County, the growers and producers of fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, meats, honey, eggs, cider, cheese and milk would love to remind us.
They’re small-business owners with generations of experience behind them in running their farms and stores. They’d love it if you’d visit.
Helping these growers and producers get the word out are the Penn State Cooperative Extension and the Lawrence County Conservation District with their brochure, “Fresh from the Farm 2008.”
In it, localvores and other fresh-food fans will find what’s available and where and when to get it.
Apple Castle is on the list. Owner Lyle Johnston said his apple orchards cover 16 acres, and he carries more than 50 varieties.
There are more than four acres of peaches and nectarines there as well. They’ll be ready in a few weeks, and customers will be able to get them into September.
“Tree-ripened peaches are the best,” Johnston said. “That’s the advantage we have.”
Johnston also sells sweet corn. His first of the year, grown under a row-crop cover that has a greenhouse effect, was ready early, July 5. Despite being a rush job, it comes with a personal guarantee.
“Well, you know where to find me if it isn’t any good,” he told a customer last week.
The store sells other local vegetables, such as tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and beans.
Johnston’s dad Ralph, 86, tends bees on the property, and sometimes, his honey is for sale there too.
The store sells ordinary items such as milk, but also some goodies you might not find anywhere else around, such as fresh-made apple-spiced and honey wheat donuts, apple-cider slushies and shoo fly pie mix.
If you want to buy some sour pie cherries but still think the work would be the pits, you can order them already pitted by the bucket load. Ten-pound buckets are $20; 30-pound buckets are $58. Order by Wednesday, and expect to pick them up July 25 or 26.
East of Apple Castle, State Route 388 and a right on Frew Mill Road takes you to Cow Path Lane. That’s the driveway that winds back into the Dean Family Farm and Adam Dean’s raw-milk dairy, Pasture Maid Creamery.
Dean, 28, sells whole, unpasteurized milk at $4 a gallon — you bring your own container. He also began making his own cheeses last September, using recipes he bought from an 82-year-old third-generation Wisconsin cheese maker. He brought the cheese maker out from where he lives now, in eastern Pennsylvania, and put him up at an area hotel so he could train with him.
Dean makes cheddar, sharp cheddar, Swiss, sharp Swiss, jack, pepper jack, colby, mozzarella and Camembert in a pole building he converted to a cheese house.
He pumps raw milk straight from the barn next door, where 130 grass-fed cows have stalls with their names on them, into a stainless steel vat that holds 3,000 pounds.
They milk the cows in the morning “and it’s cheese by lunchtime,” said Dean, whose family has owned and farmed their 500 acres for five generations.
Ten pounds of milk goes into one pound of cheese.
He does the mixing and the separating of curds and whey, and puts the cheese in blocks. Then, the cheese goes into cooler rooms where it’s aged.
By state law, raw-milk cheese has to be aged 60 days before it can be sold. Dean has a state license, and his milk and cheese are tested at a lab before he sells it.
Pasteurizing, he believes, isn’t necessary anymore — sanitation standards are much higher now than they were when the government initiated the process during World War II. The process, he said, affects the nutritional benefits of the milk.
The Deans grow crops at their farm, but they’re to feed the cows — you can’t buy vegetables there.
Don’t worry, though. If you’re craving really fresh produce, drive out U.S. Route 224 to Mohawk School Road in Edinburg and visit the 3 D’s farm and its five acres of veggies. Three D’s means the three daughters of Rob and Stephanie Matvey — Alicia, 19, Jessica, 17, and Casandra, 14.
The girls, plus other family members and friends, help to plant and pick the crops. “We start everything ourselves from seeds,” Stephanie said.
The farming supplements the family’s main living, which is a landscaping business.
They’ve been farming for 10 years. What attracted them to it?
Stephanie shook her head as if she’s not sure. Rob said he learned farming from his grandparents and always had a home garden.
Their home garden has grown, in more ways than one, and clearly, the Matveys are good at what they do. Their cabbages, in rows off to the right of the parking area, are eye-catchingly huge.
The cabbages will be ready soon, along with hot and sweet peppers, a wide variety of tomatoes, beans, squash, zucchini, corn and broccoli. Last week, the family was picking garlic.
In the spring, 3 D’s has greenhouse flowers. They grow herbs, including oregano, basil, parsley, sage, dill and chives.
In the fall, they’ll pick and sell pumpkins and squash from three more acres they rent up the road.
There are nine other growers and producers listed in the agriguide. A read through the list lets you see that when it comes to fresh food, Lawrence County covers a lot of ground.