IT’S AN APPLE HOBBY ‘GONE WILD’
Black River Orchard owners went from a few fruit trees to 950
by Dean Lesar Tribune Record Gleaner Gordy Finkelson still thinks of growing apples and maintaining an orchard as a sort of hobby. His wife, Barb, agrees, to a degree.
“It’s kind of like a hobby gone wild, is what it is,” she says.
With about 950 apple trees growing in their 10-acre Black River Orchard on Clark County Road O just south of Highway 29 west of Owen, the word “hobby” might be a stretch considering how much time and energy goes into it. The Finkelsons hand-pick every piece of fruit, sort it, bag it, process some of it and sell the rest, but still enjoy it. A big part of the reward is seeing local families come out to the orchard every autumn, enjoy a day among the trees, and leave with a peck full of healthy snacks.
Gordy and Barb were dairy farmers for 27 years. They thought their son might one day be interested in the avocation, but other pursuits caught his interest. With no one to whom to pass the operation, they sold the farm and built a house on acreage they own on the east side of the Black River in the northeast corner of the town of Longwood.
They have a long driveway, and Barb thought in the late 1990s that a few fruit trees would be an attractive addition.
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HAND SORTING - Barb Finkelson grades a day’s picking of apples at the Black River Orchard just south of Highway 29 west of Owen. The best apples will go for fresh eating, and the next grade will likely become cider or sauce. The orchard is open for self-picking or to buy pre-picked apples each Saturday and Sunday until the season’s crop is gone, probably in early November. Apples
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“We planted a few trees just above the roadway, just to be pretty,” Barb said. There were cherry trees and apricot trees and plum trees, and oh, yes, don’t forget the apple trees.
Turns out the local deer herd enjoyed the fruit trees, too, and pretty much “annihilated” them, Barb said. Still, they enjoyed the apples, so they decided to pop a few more in the ground.
“Sort of to give us something to do, we thought maybe we should plant some apple trees,” Barb said. “Then we planted a hundred more. Then we planted a hundred more. Then we planted a hundred more.”
You see where this is going, right? In the first years with their newfound orchard, Gordy and Barb just stuck a sign at the end of the driveway to sell a few bushels of their crop. That slowly grew into what is now Black River Orchard, which is complete with a large shed that serves as an attractive shop to sell fruit, a large room for processing equipment, ample cold storage for hundreds of bushels, and space for equipment storage. On Saturdays and Sundays each year from around the start of September into November, that building is a busy place.
Barb said the orchard holds a dozen varieties, including the most popular honeycrisp. Zestars sell well, too, and are excellent for pies and sauce. A newer variety, snow sweet is catching on.
“Usually once people taste it, they’re hooked on it,” Barb said.
The first apples of the season came ripe recently and the Finkelsons opened on Sept. 10 with their annual breakfast. From now through probably early November (or as long as the apples last), the orchard will be open on Saturdays from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Folks are welcome to come and wander through the orchard to pick their own apples, but there are plenty bagged and polished and ready for sale in the store. Barb and Gordy make sure of that, hand-picking fruit as it ripens, then running it through their processing machine. The apples pass through a a washing and polishing stage, then Barb stands at a large rotating table where she grades the pieces one by one. The best quality apples will be bagged and sold for fresh eating, the nextbest are sorted out for cider or maybe sauce or baking, and the rest that have been bruised or partially eaten by bugs are tossed in a bin for what she describes as “deer apples.” They need to eat, too.
The apple trees are a bit behind this year in bearing fruit, but the trees are loaded. About 350 of them are semidwarf trees, but the Finkelsons have been gradually converting to dwarves. As the name implies, they do not grow as tall, which means no ladders for picking and an easier reach for pruning. The weight of the apples bends their branches to the ground, making for easy plucking even for the tiniest hands when families visit the orchard.
Pruning is an annual spring chore. Gordy and Barb make their way down the rows, looking each tree over for dead or broken branches and to check growth. They don’t have a handy machine to do the work.
“Every branch that we cut off is cut off with a lopper, or pruner, or maybe a chain saw,” Barb said.
The Finkelsons also believe in a good mulch bed under their trees. That keeps weeds down, not just for looks, but to limit insects that may live there. A good mulch base also protects roots in winter if snow cover is scarce.
In summer, there are 10 acres to mow at least once a week, and the Finkelsons hop onto their pair of 6-foot cut, zeroturn machines and get at the 4 1/2-hour job. That’s actually a nice break for them, Barb said.
“That’s our entertainment. That’s our fun,” she said.
There is also the matter of protecting trees from various pests that can not only harm them but downgrade the quality of the apples. Barb makes sure people know the orchard is not organic, because there is fire blight and powdery mildew and apple scab and brown rot and bitter pit and coddling moths to guard against.
Barb applies a dormant oil in early spring, which coats the tree bark to smother any bugs that may have bored in during the off-season. Fungicides are applied every 3-4 days for a month in spring, and insecticides are used as needed if invaders appear.
As much as public may want to buy a product from a tree that has never been treated with any sprays, the Finkelsons are realistic.
“People want a perfect apple and you can’t get a perfect apple without using chemicals,” Gordy said.
Looks are everything when people buy their apples, Barb said, and it’s why she takes great care to wash and polish the fruit so she can present it to customers.
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THAT’S A GOOD ONE- Avery Petersen of Owen snatches a fresh apple off the branch on a recent Sunday afternoon at Black River Orchard west of Owen. She was there with her mom and dad and siblings for an annual apple-picking outing.
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“Organic is nice, but you may sell only 20 percent of your crop as a #1 apple” if chemicals aren’t employed, she said.
Barb and Gordy get to know their apples pretty well, as they handle each one several times. The first time is when gathering them as they ripen. Again, no machines for this task, even though the tree branches are chock full of fruit.
“We use no machine for picking,” Barb said. “Every apple is hand-picked, one at a time.”
With about 1,500 bushels in a good year -- their best was closer to 2,500 -- that’s a lot of pickin.’ And sorting, and bagging, and displaying. Then when all the best apples are gone, there are hundreds of bushels of #2 grade fruit that need to be turned into soft cider. The Finkelsons do have a contraption for that. It grinds and presses the juice from the apples, and that is basically cider. Barb adds no sugars or any other ingredients, and lightly freezes it. Gallons and gallons of cider leave the Black River Orchard every fall.
So do thousands of apples for eating and baking, by the half-peck, full peck, half bushel and full bushel. Barb has a simple pricing scheme, with rates depending on variety and grade. Some varieties sell better and by the bushel if they are to be used to make sauce or cider, others are better for chomping.
Barb has selected the varieties for her orchard that she knows people like. She’s steady at 12 varieties, but is always watching to see what’s new.
“Almost everything we have out there, I tasted them first,” Barb said.
The Finkelsons have been paying from $30-$35 per new tree they plant, compared to more like $10 when they started their orchard. They buy all grafted trees, mostly from northern Minnesota. Those have hardy root system to survive the Wisconsin climate, and a grafted tree is sure to be a true variety instead of something cross-pollinated.
There was a time not so long ago when the Finkelsons knew little about grafting, or apple scab, or coddling moths. Like their orchard, their knowledge base has expanded, by research and trial and error. Barb soaked in as much as she could at Wisconsin Apple Growers Association field days.
“You just kind of take notes, and thank heaven for the Internet,” she said.
The Finkelsons are not expanding the orchard any more, but converting to dwarf trees. That’s more a matter of labor than anything else.
“The older we get, there seems to be more work,” Barb said. What she doesn’t consider work is visiting with the many faithful and new customers that come to the orchard on cool fall weekend days. She does provide some apples for the Owen Withee School District -- where she also works as a substitute teacher -- but all the rest of the sales are out of the store. She gets a lot of familiar faces each fall, and word is spreading about the orchard over the years.
“We get pretty much everybody and anybody, young, old and everything in between, from all over,” Barb said.
ORCHARD STROLL - Jeff Petersen of Owen walks ahead of his family to check out the various apple varieties at Black River Orchard. He and his wife, Ellen, brought their four kids to the orchard on a Sunday to fetch some fresh fruit snacks.
