Orchard Vocabulary
A little web dictionary to help you understand some of our most commonly used orchard terms!
Clingstone
Talking about peaches. Clingstone refers to how a peach variety cuts away from the pit (the seed inside a peach). A clingstone peach, which all the early season varieties are, does not cleanly come off the pit. Which means you may have to cut around it! Important to know if you're looking to can or bake in large amounts as it takes some extra work.
Freestone
Talking about peaches. Freestone refers to how a peach variety cuts away from the pit (the seed inside the peach). A freestone variety, our later season peach varieties, will come cleanly away from the pit when it is cut into. Which makes freestone varieties ideal for canning and cooking!
Seconds
When we grade fruit and produce, it either goes as firsts (as close to perfect as we can get them) or seconds. Seconds are fruits that have bruises, blemishes, and split seeds (when talking about peaches). They need to be worked with sooner and are sold half price in the store. People looking to can, bake, or make sauce generally gravitate towards the seconds.
Half Bushels n Pecks
We sell our fruit by the basket size.
Half Bushels: our largest size, approx. 25lbs of fruit. These baskets can be found displayed on the barn floor. They are then sorted and boxed/bagged by our employees.
Peck: half of a half bushel (1/4 bushel)
1/2 Peck: half of a peck (1/8 bushel)
1/4 Peck: half of a half peck (1/16 bushel)
Split Seed
Talking about peaches. Occasionally the pit of a peach will split in half, so when you cut into it, there will be a bit of the pit on either side of the peach. You can tell if there is a split seed by looking at the stem side of a peach if there is a gap/split. These peaches will go into seconds.
Gleaning
Refers to ground apples. After we send our crews through to pick the apples off the trees in our pick your own lot, we let the public come pick ground apples for a discounted price of $4/half bushel. These ground apples are great for sauce, cider, and feeding animals.