Fruit Flowers

Pssst. I’m going to let you in on a secret. Yeah, I know the cherry blossoms are almost upon us and that means tourist season. Bus trips from Brooklynites and Bostonians will soon be trekking in on luxury motor coaches by the thousands. {Don’t call it a bus trip} We, as humans, tend to seek out the beauty in life, especially those spots within several hours of home.

I know how it feels to live in a tourist destination when the blossoming of fruit trees clogs the streets with everyone insistent on experiencing the magic and pageantry of spring. There’s always that one annual event that sends the staunchest locals scrambling for an out-of-town destination. It doesn’t have to be anything requiring an extensive travel itinerary including mass transit, but even a weekend in a tent might be preferable to the traffic and din of a tourist influx.

Nothing says hope for the future like a fruit blossom.  But the cherry trees of Washington, DC don’t bear the kind of fruit you’d use in a pie. Fruits of the ornamental trees are small and bitter, best left for feeding the urban wildlife.

So here’s a little secret we in the South Mountain region can tell you.

We’ve got R E A L cherry blossoms. Like the cherries in cherry pie and maraschino cherries, cherry cobbler and cherry ice cream. We’ve got a whole lot more than just cherries, too. There’s peaches, plums, apricots, and nectarines all getting ready to flower over the next month.

Sure, driving through the historic homes and monuments in the District is an awe-inspiring experience, but you live here and see the same blooming trees year after year. But what if I told you that just over the mountain were over twenty two thousand acres of fruit trees screaming  SPRING IS HERE!!!  You want history? We got it and without all the armed security, Jersey barriers, and metal detectors.

Did you know that many of the Central Farm Market vendors hail from the mid-Atlantic fruit belt that runs along the ridges from Maryland into the northernmost terminus of the Blue Ridge Mountains in south-central Pennsylvania? So for the distance they travel each week to bring awesome foods into the city, you could escape for a day awash in an ocean of fruit flowers that may someday show up at your weekly market as fruit.

Take a trip. Get away for a day or two. Here’s a hint. Since the more rural regions tend to focus on their local customers, check out the good ol’ fashion billboards for local lodging and dining.  Or better yet, ask your favorite South Mountain vendors. They know where all the best spots in town are, including the ones with their products on the menu and on tap.

Here’s another well-kept secret: lots of great music. You don’t have to score tickets or pony up a cover. Fair warning, a lot of times it’s BYOS (bring your own seating), but the price of a fancy bag chair is far less than tickets to a show at the Anthem and you get to keep it to use over and over again.

Perhaps the thing that surprises most of my friends who come up from the city is the food, the amazing variety of quality food. Y’all think you had it going on with all the James Beard Award Michelin Star hot new chef restaurants, eh? Where do you think all the mom & pop independent eateries get their ingredients? From the farmers! We don’t care about those chain joints lining the feeder roads to the interstate, but we love our local foods & libations. Head for the small downtowns and state roads where you’ll find an amazing variety of places to eat. Here’s a hint.  Ask your South Mountain farmers what restaurants they supply in the region or better yet, where they go out to eat for an off-farm meal  Some of our vendors such as cider houses, breweries, and distilleries have on-site food venues and music! You know, if you’ve got cider, you’ve got fruit trees and if there’s fruit trees, there’s blossoms.

And then there’s the diversity. Big fruit and vegetable growing areas are home to many different immigrant/migrant/refugee populations who arrive for agricultural jobs and then settle. Someone always opens a restaurant to serve up tastes of home and within a generation the landscape is dotted with everything including Mexican, Caribbean, various South American, Bosnian, Nepali, Middle Eastern, and assorted Asian cuisines. There are no lines, no reservations, no crowds, just some super authentic and delicious meals.

Another great thing about the fruit blossoms of South Mountain is the season lasts far longer than the Capitol region cherry blossoms. Commercial fruit tree flowers open at different stages and last longer than their ornamental compatriots. With the fruit belt running from as far south as Gaithersburg  north into Adams, Franklin, and Cumberland counties of Pennsylvania, you’ve got a lot to territory to cover that offers a stunning array of blossoming fruit trees. And if you’re into history, many of the regional Civil War sites where in the heart of orchard country.   

For all you fishing fans, fruit blossom season happens to coincide with the opening  of trout season. Some of the best trout fishing in America is in the limestone spring fed streams in the heart of South Mountain orchard country, the same karst topography that puts the region on point for growing great food.