Hillside Poms – Corning, California

If you’ve been following us for a while, you might have noticed that we like to visit farms! While I like to plan a wide variety of field trips covering a broad range of topics, we really like to visit farms a lot! Our most recent trip was to Hillside Poms in Corning, California. During this season of sugary treats galore, it’s nice to try and focus on fresh fruits and veggies whenever possible. We met up with our good friends and fellow homeschoolers to pick and juice pomegranates.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day. We’re loving soaking in this warm California sunshine. Sorry, I know some of you are already shoveling snow off your driveways!

Hillside Poms is a real working farm and we did real manual labor here.  It was such a great experience for the kids! I’m so grateful when I’m able to show them how we get our food, and that it’s not just sitting on a shelf in the grocery store. The first step was hauling wheelbarrows and wagons to the fruit trees.

Next, we picked the pomegranates. Apparently, these trees are part of the rose family and they have thorns. The proprietor, S.W., taught us that heavy pomegranates are ripe and light ones are rotten. She also taught us that the best fruit for making juice is already split open. Let’s get picking!

After we had bins brimming with fruit we headed back to the juicing shed and sampled some pomegranate juice. B thought it was a little tart. lol

They were actually the sweetest, most delicious pomegranates I’ve ever tasted. There’s nothing like fresh-picked fruit. Am I right!?! Plus they are really good for you!

S.W., the farm co-owner gave us a lesson on using the juicer. And here I thought she was going to juice it for us. Haha! Silly me, this was a legit make-it-yourself, from scratch experience. Such an awesome homeschool field trip. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Juicing was a simple 4-step process… 😉

Step #1: wash the fruit

Step #2: load the juicer

Steps #3: operate various levers, and move pipes, funnels, sieves, and bottles, while keeping track of children, not spilling juice, not getting juice on your clothes while capturing the juice in bottles. (It was actually pretty easy once we got a system going 😉)

Here are me and my dad operating the juicer.

The juice is dark red and it stains. I asked my mom to get a photo of my dad’s hands because my hands were also covered in juice.

Step #4: dump the leftover stuff in the compost pile & start back at step #1 until all your fruit is juiced.

Step #5: eat more pomegranates and “Have a pom ❤️ happy day!”

We got so much juice! We sort of got carried away picking, it’s so much fun! Plus, we seemed to manage to choose extra super juicy fruit. Thank goodness, my friend, L.T. brought along extra bottles for collecting it all. Spoiler alert: We’re thinking of making a lot of pomegranate syrup or pomegranate molasses to give as Christmas gifts.

If you are ever near Corning, California during harvest season, be sure to book an appointment at Hillside Poms. It’ll be a Pom-wonderful experience that you’ll always remember!

🌳 By any chance, does anyone happen to have a favorite recipe that uses pomegranates or pomegranate juice?