Corn Maze

PYO Flowers

PYO Strawberries

Wed, June 21st, 2011

Open Friday, June 23rd 7:30 – 1:30

Now open for the 2011 season.  Pick Your Own fresh strawberries at our Pleasant Lake Farm fields.   To reach the Pleasant Lake Fields, go to the middle of New London and turn onto North Pleasant St. between Artisan’s and Lake Sunapee Bank.  The fields are 1.8 miles down the hill on your right.  You will see Pleasant Lake just before you get to the fields.

Useless Strawberry Trivia
by any other name, its still a strawberry Dutch aardebei French Fraise German Erdbeere Spanish Fresa Danish jordbaer Italian Fragola	Botanically, the latin name isFragaria x ananassa DuschesneStrawberries are in the Rosaceae family, the rose family, along with raspberries, roses, and thousands of other plants both familiar and foreign.
The Strawberry plant is a perennial plant, meaning it will survive the winters up here in NH and come back again in the spring.  Commercially, most strawberry plants survive and produce well for about 3 years. We planted 8,000 plants this spring which will produce for us starting next June.  Every year we plant another succession of plants so that we always have some plants that are at their peak of production while others wane and new ones start.	Did you know… the tiny seeds on the strawberry (called achenes) are what makes the strawberry fruit grow.  Each seed, once it is pollinated, exudes hormones that grow the red fruit around each particular seed.  The more pollination you have, the better your strawberry because each seed will be viable.  If you took off some of the tiny seeds while the strawberry was still green, you would end up with a warped strawberry – growing red flesh only where there were seeds and not growing at all where you removed the seeds.

Strawberries are high in vitamin C. Here is their basic breakdown of nutrients: per 100g. edible portion

% water	Kcal Energy	Protein	Fat	Carbo	Fiber	Ca	P	Fe	Na	K
92	30 kcal	0.6g	0.4g	7g	0.5	14mg	19mg	0.4mg	1mg	166mg
Vit A	Thiamin	Riboflavin	Niacin	Vit. C	Vit. B6
27 IU	0.02mg	0.07mg	0.23mg	56.7mg	0.06mg

IU = International Units

I’m not sure how many strawberries make up a 100g. edible portion, but I aim to find out…

says here that about 8 strawberries are equal to one orange in terms of vitamin C content.

Fall Season

Spring Ledge Farm’s autumn begins cold and crisp in New Hampshire, it’s time for warm cider and composting leaves. The vegetable season tapers off, only growing in the greenhouses now, and outside mums and pumpkins are ready for sale! The stand begins selling the many varieties of chrysanthemums late in August and continues until early November. Other fall items are corn stalks harvested from the corn fields, pumpkins, hearty squashes and gourds, decorative kale and cabbage and greenhouse tomatoes. Call the bee-line to find out what is selling. Stop by and pick up some late season goods at Spring Ledge Farm! See you there!

Winter Season