Otow Orchard

“Stupendous, little slice of land. Friendliest staff around. Fresh farm-based foods you can find not grown in your own garden. Hopefully you can pay a visit and take a quick gander around the grounds, as you won't regret it one tiny bit. Small and sensible, yet spacious and spread out. It's kinda tucked away, from prying eyes. Seemingly in its own small town, down south in some sort of time capsule. If you're making juices or pies, or maybe even just eating fruit in its intended form, look no further than Otow Orchard, my dear friend.”

“It was a very relaxed shopping experience. The setting is peaceful, featuring fruit trees that have been there for years and the occasional car driving in. The products seem excellent; I bought some fruit and dried persimmons—a unique treat I’d never tried before. They were soft, chewy, and coated in a fine layer of sugar—absolutely delicious 😋. It’s definitely worth a visit to stock up.”

“I saw on their blog that they had white peaches already. I drove out to the nursery and got several white peaches. They're so good on my Cheerios for breakfast. Also got some of their frozen persimmon pulp to make persimmon bread. Loquats and snap peas to finish off. It’s great getting produce where it's grown. Worth the drive. It's always so interesting talking to Tosh.”

“Wow! Their fruit is delicious. Everything that we bought was so good. We got figs, peaches, apricots, plums, and mulberries. It was the first time for us eating mulberries and we loved them. They were exceptionally sweet.”

“I really liked this farm with its wonderfully kind owners and very tasty fruits, at reasonable prices.”

“Love persimmons! They dry their own persimmons and have different varieties you can’t find in stores.”

“The farmstand was clean and organized, and the peaches were just as good as they looked !”

“A dried persimmon is more than just a wrinkled fruit. It is a miniature masterpiece of food chemistry, made visible by time. The sweetness does not simply increase because new sugar appears; water leaves the fruit and the existing sugar becomes concentrated, like jam that was never boiled. Many dried persimmons start out as astringent persimmons; the harshness comes from water-soluble tannins, the kind that tighten the tongue and make the mouth shrink. During the drying process, the inside of the fruit changes. With less oxygen, the fruit produces substances such as acetaldehyde, which help to turn the tannins into a form that no longer dissolves easily in the mouth. So the bitterness is sealed, the sweetness is condensed, and the fruit suddenly tastes almost impossibly sweet. It is not magic, but it feels close. Drying persimmons is a preservation technique, a way to lock away astringency and bring sugar to the fore, a quiet chemical transformation taking place inside a shrinking orange body.”