A happy New year to all… Friends, Family and Neighbors.  We hope you are all well and enjoying the slower rhythm of winter.  We sure are!  Skiing, ice skating and sledding are all main activities for the next couple of months.  We are also maintaining the farm, planning for the garden, ordering fruit trees to plant.  My favorite farm project this winter is the building of the chicken coop and yard.  We have designed a great system and look forward to you all coming down for the U-PICK eggs!

Big B’s Fabulous Cider Mill is running very strong right now, pressing close to three thousand gallons of juice a day.  Getting all of that juice pressed, bottled, packed, shipped and sold is no small undertaking!  Huge kudos to the World Class Big B’s Crew!  Also down at Big B’s we have upgraded and stoked up our FERMENTATION room… North Fork Cellars hard cidery.  Our vintner and store manager Shawn Larson just got back from a super informative five day intensive hard cider workshop held in Washington State apple country.  We have several tanks of apple varieties fermenting away… Wait until you taste these new releases in April!!!

In addition to these exciting, positive projects we have also been heavily involved with a very serious community issue.  We as a valley and community of people, the North Fork Valley are under attack from the oil and gas industry.  There has been 30,000 acres put up to lease for oil and gas exploration and drilling.  All of these acres are within or directly adjacent to our valley, our neighborhood.  This oil and gas development must never take place in our pastoral, agriculturally viable homeland.

Natural gas drilling is an extremely destructive process; the use of hazardous chemicals to pump the gas out of the ground threatens both our irrigation and drinking water, the 1000 fold increase in heavy truck traffic threatens our safety on our very narrow country roads and small highway.  The pollution from gas development threatens our way of life, our livelihoods, farms and the health and safety of our families!

If you have visited Delicious Orchards store, café, campground, u-pick please help us fend off this attack, so we can continue to provide the highest quality food and real farm experience for ALL of US!

Please help us to prevent this type of inconsistent, illogical, destructive industrial development.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is accepting public comments regarding oil and gas leases on these 22 parcels (which comprise the 30,000 acres.)  We have until FEBUARY 9^th to submit comments to the BLM.  I have included a few different ways that you can submit comments to the BLM.  Click this link to bring you to a petition.  Please sign the petition and submit an ACTUAL LETTER! (Personal letters are much more effective) Click here for a template to help you create your own letter and comments. You can also click here to copy a prewritten letter, that simply needs to be MODIFIED and sent.   Please feel free to do what is comfortable for you!  Any little bit helps, however the more information the better. There are a lot of specific details in the pre-written letter and in the attached information.   Please cc all of the email addresses shown including us at Delicious Orchard.  If you have any questions or comments PLEASE email us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

I truly appreciate everyone's TIME and SUPPORT!  We need your help in order to maintain our healthy food shed and way of life!

We look forward to seeing all of you in this new year of Hope and Growth!

Happy New Year,

From ALL of us at Delicious Orchards and Big B’s Fabulous Juices