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Orchard Outings Remain a Family Tradition

October 01, 2008 - FAIRFIELD -- Fred and Connie Lagomarsino came out of the orchard at The Apple Farm on Thursday morning with a bagful of Macouns and the satisfaction of completing an annual ritual.

"We come every year," Fred Lagomarsino said. "It is an outing and a place where we buy apples, and if we have grandchildren with us, we come on the weekend to ride the (horse-drawn) cart."

Tradition. Entertainment. Family friendly. And a source of the freshest fruit.

The attraction of apple orchards in Maine is multifaceted, which might explain why business remains strong, especially on weekends when the weather is nice.

"I think they are having a good year," University of Maine tree fruit specialist Ranae Moran said of the industry. "The weather has been good on the weekend. One summer we had a lot of rain on the weekends, and that hurt the whole industry."

That industry produced 40 million pounds of apples in 2007, the largest total in New England, and one that resulted in $12 million in sales, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Bobbiejo Roderick of Skowhegan was another pick-your-own customer at The Apple Farm on Thursday.

Like the Lagomarsinos, Roderick and four other family members said coming to the orchard is a family tradition.

Price, too, is a drawing card, they said, especially if picking the "drops" -- apples that have fallen to the ground.

"As long as they're not eaten by an animal," Roderick's aunt Sandra Meader said, "they are as good as the ones on the trees."

At $6 a bushel, Kevin Meader -- Sandra's husband -- gets a brown grocery bag filled with apples for $3.

Terri Glidden, an Apple Farm employee, said for some customers, buying the drops is a tradition as unbreakable as coming to the orchard itself.

In contrast to its customers, however, the apple industry in Maine has been forced to make some changes.

Moran said the number of acres dedicated to apple farming has decreased significantly, reflecting decreased interest in the wholesale market.

That market has become highly competitive thanks to increased competition from South American countries and New Zealand, among others, Moran said.

The trend among Maine orchards, she said, has been to sell directly to customers through retail stores or pick-your-own orchards.

North Star Orchards in Madison offers both a retail store and pick-your-own -- and so far sales have been good, said Jennifer Dimock, one of four Dimocks who own and operate the farm.

"Our crop is wonderful," she said, "and our business has been great. I think people are looking to buy local."

North Star, though, also has a wholesale component, delivering directly to the local Hannaford supermarket.

The Apple Farm does likewise and also sells wholesale apples to Northcenter Foodservice Corp. and Colby, Bates and Bowdoin colleges.

In this sense, North Star and Apple Farm rank as exceptions to the rule.

"We have actually grown only because we were more just retail and we've grown into local wholesale," Marilyn Meyerhans of The Apple Farm said.

Meyerhans and her husband Steve own both The Apple Farm and Lakeside Orchards in Manchester.

At both locations they have a retail store and pick-your-own sales. The Manchester farm also has a bakery and houses the processing equipment for the Meyerhans' wholesale operation.

"You could say we are vertically integrated," Marilyn Meyerhans said. "We do it all. We grow (the apples). We pick them. We pack them. We store them. We deliver them. It makes for long days."

Meyerhans said her orchards are hardly alone in this regard.

"Most all of us do everything," she said, "or are so small that the owners have outside jobs to help support the farm."

09/27/2008 by Colin Hickey, staff writer, Kennebec Journal


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