HOEC: the Home Orchard Education Center and its Orchard CSA

Last fall I decided to join the board at the Home Orchard Education Center. It’s an organization that’s near and dear to my interests since it not only helps to train others in orchard care, but food is also an inclusive, community-centered part of horticulture. And while orchards can be beautiful and ornamental, they also provide us with nourishing food.

I have to think about food in ways that many don’t due to my allergies. Luckily, fresh produce is a large part of my diet. I grew up eating seasonally in the Willamette Valley, with many folks we knew sharing their harvests, and we drove to farm stands often to pick up food on the weekends.

Back when I was a girl, my plant mentor had told me about the Home Orchard Society, and what is HOEC today, sprung from that group after it concluded its operations in 2020. If you ever went to their apple tastings at the Clackamas County Fairgrounds, you can count yourself lucky indeed.

I decided to join their board because I wanted to develop new leadership skills, but I also wanted to reconnect with my childhood, as well as the decade I spent married to a skilled chef, wine grower, and wine maker who also had olive orchard experience in addition to a vast array of agricultural skills and knowledge. I often miss that lifestyle, and wonder what life could have been like if we’d been able to own our own farmland and I’d been physically healthier.

Food is health on so many levels. I love being connected to the land and food. Honestly, without that, I wouldn’t know who I am. It’s part of my mental, physical, and spiritual well-being as a human. I’m really glad that I joined the board, and I will continue to strive to improve as a leader.

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In addition to the many courses that are offered at the orchard, (and educational online information such as this: Caneberries, Bat-ology, and Drupelets!) one of the other great offerings provided through the hard work of the Executive Director and the volunteers is our CSA program.

If you live locally, please consider supporting the orchard by purchasing a CSA box—maybe share it with a friend! Running the orchard very much depends upon funding from the community and this program is important to our financial well-being and to sustain our programming.

Below is an image I snapped with a listing of what you can generally expect to find in your boxes during the subscription time. (Keep in mind too, that this is all grown using organic methods.)

Considering what you’ll be receiving, and the variety of heirlooms combined with the *bonus* fruits, this is very affordable for organically-grown fruit.

So this last week I finally signed up for the Homesteader’s Bounty box, and I hope to add the Individual Share in the next week or two. When my boxes come in, I’ll be sure to let you know what they contain, and tell you how the varieties taste. I can’t wait to try them since the process of finding each of the heirlooms is not easy in a world full of Honeycrisps lol.

And lastly, please come out to visit the orchard Tuesdays, or Saturdays from 10am to 2pm, sign up for our newsletters, and consider a class, or maybe attending our annual fundraiser the Taste of the Orchard on September 20th at the Gregory Forum on the Clackamas Community College campus.