I saw a show on the Food Network about Knoxberry Farm (around Anaheim, CA). As I recall, it said something about the farm going broke, so they added some rides to attract visitors. Also, they made a well-liked jelly from some berry they renamed “boysenberry”. If you know something about this, please share!
Actually, the rides and shows were added to keep people entertained while they waited in line for Mrs. Knott’s fried chicken, which was and is legendary. Eventually the park started making more money than the fried chicken place. The boysenberry was developed by a person named, you guessed it, Boysen. Knott was the first farmer to really devote some serious acrage to growing the new variety.
BTW, it’s Knott’s Berry Farm.
Google made me a neat time line of boysenberry history. Like silenus said, they were originally developed by Rudolph Boysen, but made popular by Walter Knott.
As to them going broke, in 1942, on Mother’s Day, they served 6,309 dinners. I don’t think they were going broke. If I’m not mistaken, there were no rides at that date. But, I’m ready to be corrected.
In 1942, the only ride was the Mine Train, if that. The ghost town was in the process of bing built, and there were the Western shows, but that’s about it.
I get Knott’s Berry Farm brand Raspberry Shortcake cookies every so often. The package copy says Walter Knott first cultivated boysenberries in 1932, a year when going broke was rather a popular pastime.
Missmossie’s timeline corroborates the year, and adds that by 1933 Knott’s had made the new berry the “basis” of their operation, suggesting it had caught on in a big way.
The largest boysenberry producer in the world is New Zealand, and for a time one of the largest boysenberry producers in New Zealand was my uncle. Now he grows mostly raspberries. I have done much mowing between rows of boysenberries. I have also done a fair bit of [del]nominal[/del] picking of boysenberries [del]while actually mostly stuffing my face with them[/del].
They are a hybrid of loganberry/blackberry/raspberry. They are a large and impressive fruit, but they don’t have anywhere near the intensity of flavour of a raspberry or for that matter blackberry. IMHO.
But they make a wonderful melomel. I once made a batch using boysenberries I called “Cyrus The Great.”
You know, because one man’s Mede is another man’s Persian.
OK, I have to admit–I didn’t see that one coming. :smack:
The OP’s mistake is understandable. As a kid growing up in Southern California, I thought it was “Knottsberry Farm” and didn’t realize it was supposed to be a Berry Farm, until I saw the labels.