We Berrys have been on the land since 1971. From 1979 until 2001 we grew a commercial crop
of apples and pears, the Canyon Park Orchard. We are very proud of the high grade fruit
that we were able to produce nearly achieving the status of certified "Organic" through
our own research, not an easy accomplishment in this Puget Sound Convergence Zone weather.
But the arrival of the apple maggot put an end to the production. 

We are the only operation of its kind in this region and we used all of the available
spring water to irrigate, never enough, and we always prayed for rain before harvest.

We worked to gather all of the available water in Zone 1 other than the wetland seep that
is part of George Meritt's property (see image right). In a good snowpak year we were able
to put approximately 10 gallons per minute into our irrigation pond at the bottom of the
property. That's not much water and it had to be managed carefully using drip irrigation. 

Not long after we arrived on our property, early 1970's, we were told that tracer work had
sourced the spring water at the Spada Lake region of the Cascades and as I mentioned
before our irrigation supply ran dependent on the snowpak. The strata that make up the
ridge that Zone 1 is part of are tipped at an angle in this manner \ that exposes various
soils from the top of the ridge to the bottom. Pure beach sand is deep east at the top of
the orchard under the Seattle City Light power lines and as you work your way down the
hill you will encounter thin hard pan and then pure loam with broken rock in place near
the source of the most productive spring. Further down the hill which is just above our
house there is a seam of spring seeps that spread from south to north, that don't produce
very much water and just west of that a deep hard pan that creates a dry region. One more
seep lives at the bottom of the property where the irrigation pond is. The pit tests that
were performed in the Spring of 2015 only found ground water when dug near spring sources
otherwise the digs were dry. And in our long experience living on and working the land we
have drilled literally thousands of holes, dug large deep holes with available heavy
equipment and have always found the same results as the 2015 Spring pit tests.

These are all facts gathered over the many years, all facts that were not realized using
BAS, best available science, in the rest of the subarea.

The Berry Family