Cabalo's Orchard and Gardens

On West King Road outside Kuna, Cabalo’s Orchard and Gardens keeps a farm stand open Thursday through Sunday. The season runs from early summer, when the first produce is ready, to the close of the pumpkin patch at the end of October. The other three days, the owners write, are for farming. Chan and Cathy Cabalo run the place on ten acres by their own count, with help from their children, grandchildren and friends. Cathy described the division of labor to the Capital Press in 2021: “I deal with customers and run the farmstand, and he takes care of the farming. I meet the customers and sell the produce or start the people on their trip to pick fruit.”

The stand’s offerings change weekly. Cathy told the paper she writes a newsletter on Wednesday nights saying what will be ripe. A recent list on the farm’s home page included:

• jack-o’-lantern and warty pumpkins, small decorative gourds, broom corn and Indian corn
• Fife wheat and Fife wheat flour
• Snow Leopard and Canary melons, and Sangria and red-seeded Shiney Boy watermelons
• Sweet Shelly grapes, purple-skinned Huckleberry potatoes and O’Henry peaches
• chilies from Anaheim and Serrano to Mole, plus a Felicity jalapeño listed at zero heat

The farm calls its Moon and Stars watermelon a heritage variety with “the flavor of the 1930’s.” Its rind is nearly black and scattered with small yellow stars, often with one large yellow moon. The shelves also hold dried and freeze-dried fruit and honey from Cox’s Honey, whose bees are kept on the farm. There are jams and jellies too, which Cathy makes by what she calls the oldest method, with more fruit than sugar in every batch and raw organic sugar.

All the fruit and vegetables are grown with organic-certified pest control, fertilizer and weed control products. The Cabalos chose not to certify the produce as organic. “Our fruit is safe to eat right off the tree,” the farm states. An undated notice on the same home page reports that the u-pick apples were lost that year to an April freeze, and that apples would be brought in from another low-impact orchard. The week’s list still carried Honey Crisp, Jonathan, Golden Delicious and Fuji.

Apples in the order they ripen

The farm’s apple page lists its varieties in the order they ripen.

• Gravenstein comes first, usually in early August. The farm says it was first found in Denmark in the 1700s. It is picked green, because by the time its red stripes show it softens and drops.
• Pacific Gala ripens in mid-August, a week ahead of Royal Gala.
• Royal Gala is yellow with a red blush on the sunny side.
• Honey Crisp and Golden Delicious arrive in early September. The page warns that u-pick Honey Crisp lasts only a few days once it is announced.
• Red Delicious comes in early to mid-September.
• Jonathan, Jonagold, MacIntosh and Winesap follow in mid-September. Winesap is prized by hard cider makers for its tannin.
• Braeburn, which stays crunchy in storage, ripens in late September.
• Criterion closes the apple season in early October.

Other fruit follows its own calendar:

• Pie cherries (Montmorency and North Star) ripen in late June and, the farm says, tend to sell out before they are picked.
• Apricots (Early Sunglow and Perfection) come in early to mid-July.
• A thornless u-pick blackberry ripens the last week of July.
• Plums (Simka and Santa Rosa) arrive in August and September.
• Italian prunes come in September. The farm explains that a prune is meaty where a plum is juicy, and is the only kind that can be dried.
• Peaches are brought in from western Idaho, berries from Oregon, and Bartlett pears from outside growers.
• Sweet cherries (Mazzard and Black Republican) were expected to bear their first crop in 2025.

Raw cider, turkeys and a free hayride

The orchard has pressed raw apple cider since 2012, according to its website. Speaking to the Capital Press in 2021, Cathy put the start at “10 years ago” and said cider season begins in early September. The cider is unpasteurized. “The last thing we wanted to do with our cider is cook all the natural benefits out of it,” the farm writes. Because it is raw, it can be sold only by the Cabalos or their emissaries, directly to the buyer.

For a time they worked with another family who owned a large antique cider press, and customers came to watch it run. “We only did that a few years, however, because we needed a team of people to run it,” Cathy said. They then bought a new stainless steel press.

Thanksgiving turkeys range in the orchard. They are fed a blend of wheat, corn, barley, alfalfa and other grains grown by Vogel Farms of Kuna.

In October the pumpkin patch opens for picking, and a hayride carries visitors out to it and back. “We have never charged anyone for the hayride and we never plan to,” the farm states. By 2021 the patch had spread onto rented ground beside the orchard. The stand keeps recipes for roasted pumpkin seeds and old-fashioned pumpkin pie.

Her father’s Red Delicious

Cathy’s family planted the orchard in 1986. Her father’s main apple was the old-fashioned Red Delicious, which the farm says was then the most popular apple in America. He planted Royal Gala the same year.

The Capital Press listed Golden Delicious, Criterion and Jonathan among the older trees. The Cabalos later added Pacific Gala, Gravenstein, Jonagold, Honeycrisp, Braeburn, Granny Smith, MacIntosh and Winesap, along with cherries, apricots, prunes, plums, pears, and raspberry and blackberry patches. The paper put the farm at 10.5 acres, about two-thirds orchard, with more than 1,400 trees.

The Capital Press says Chan and Cathy took over from her father in 2004. Cathy told the Kuna Melba News in 2017 that the couple bought the orchard and farm from their parents that year. They moved it to organic practices.

Cathy traced that habit to the 1980s, when her daughter was allergic to horses and a doctor told her to switch to organic, hormone-free milk. She thought the idea “crazy,” she said, but the allergy stopped. After that she became a label reader. Pointing to a bag of chips, she told the reporter: “Potatoes, oil, salt. That’s it. I know what those are.”

The Red Delicious trees stayed in the ground. “So many people come to my orchard and have never eaten an apple straight from a tree,” Cathy said in 2017. “They say they hate red delicious apples. Then I have them come and pick a red delicious from my orchard and it amazes them every time.” That year she and her friend Debi Engelhardt-Vogel of Vogel Farms were planning a nine-month class called Till to Grill, on growing, picking and putting up food at home.

Customers come from Boise and Mountain Home, Cathy said in 2021. Her son and his family live in Kuna and help a lot, and she hoped he might take the farm over someday. The grandchildren were then 12, 11, 10 and 8.

The Criterion apple was introduced in the 1980s, but its skin proved too delicate for commercial shipping. Most orchards, the farm writes, pulled the trees or turned the fruit into cider. “My Dad saved his trees and we still have them today.”