Valley View Orchard and Long Walk Vineyard
How did your orchard and vineyard get started and what inspires you?
Valley View Orchard has been in operation for over 100 years. For many years it was owned and operated by the Wagner family, and pears and cherries were the main focus. The Eshoo family arrived in the 1960s and planted many new tree varieties, including peaches, apricots and apples. They also opened up the summer store and u-pick that many generations of local fruit fans have enjoyed. My husband Tim and I took over the business in 2000, and we planted our first vineyard in the early 2000s. Valley View Orchard and Long Walk Vineyard are twin passions for us, and we are continually inspired by our people and our customers, and our shared commitment to organic farming, land stewardship, and great tasting fruit and wine.
How do your practices affect the flavor and quality of your products?
We received our organic certification by Oregon Tilth in 2002, and we have been faithful followers of organic farming and sustainable agriculture since the beginning. We believe organic fruit tastes better, and operating our orchard and vineyard in a less machine intensive environment helps with quality as well. We hand sort our fruit to make sure only the best goes to market. In most years our u-pick customers do a better job of this than we do, but in the current COVID environment where we have paused our u-pick business, we are paying extra attention to make sure our customers have the very best we have to offer.
What is the most difficult part of running your operation?
Keeping up with Mother Nature! She is our real boss, and when she decides a fruit variety is ready, we have to kick into gear fast.
What are your most popular products?
Cherries and peaches are the most popular products, year in and year out. Frozen, pitted Montmorency cherries are awesome for making pies all year long, and we have developed a big following of pie makers who snap them up. Apricots are also a big favorite, but they are hard to grow this far north, so in a year like 2020 where we had them, it was a very happy event for us and for our customers.
What do you love about the Rogue Valley?
It would be easier to ask what don't we love about the Rogue Valley. For us, though, it comes down to the people, who are simply the best. We have felt part of the community from Day 1, and never more so than this year. Of course, the natural beauty that surrounds us all doesn't hurt, either.
What's next for you as a farmer, rancher, etc?
We are in the middle of a habitat restoration project, to invite even more benificial parts of nature to help our organic practices. We are committed to a long term tree replacement rhythm -- some of our trees are over 80 years old! And we are thinking about adding a new vineyard to the property.
What upcoming events, even if they are not public are you looking forward to? For instance, harvest, baby lambs, pumpkin patch, etc. Perhaps we could supply a link to their event if it is public?
This summer we started up a member box subscription program, with a box of the latest offerings ready every two weeks. We started with cherries in June, and will finish with apples and pears in late September. We're also looking forward to hosting more events in our Long Walk Vineyard tasting house -- one example is our "last Friday" monthly food pairing event for wine club member. We are lucky that from June until late October we always have a new harvest just around the corner!
Tell us something most people don't know about your location.
It may surprise people to know that our Talent apricots come from trees cloned from the original Talent apricot tree -- from our neighbor city of Talent. And we think it is very cool that our Tasting House contains a lot of recyled and reused materials, including 100 year old barn wood and sheets of tin from our former chicken coop.
