Tag: orchard

After a lifetime of living and working amongst the fruit trees at Peace Valley Orchards, Dan Simmons is retiring from the family business.

Learn how to determine when your apples are ripe enough to pick based on variety, color, firmness, seed coats, smell, taste and ease of removal. 

After unusually warm weather in the early spring, much of Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with other states, were hit hard by a late snow and several nights near or below freezing in late April. Fruit farm and orchard owners across the state are seeing the impact, but aren’t sure what the full extent of the damage will be yet.

Learn how to successfully plant pear trees and ensure that they produce fruit by understanding their growing requirements and best practices for planting.

Weston Lombard has spent more than a decade working on turning Solid Ground Farm, a former horse farm, in Millfield, Ohio, into a system that can meet many of his own food needs, and help other people connect with their environment. Native plants that work well with the natural landscape are an important part of that.

In 2021, Sasha Miller is hoping to get pears from the trees she planted a few years ago for the first time, at Purplebrown Farmstead. Those trees are part of her long term plan to develop a cider orchard. But her permaculture system also involves pigs, poultry, vegetables and mushrooms. Permaculture, Miller explained, involves creating a system that can be sustainable and self sufficient.

The Metrick family raises almost every kind of vegetable you can think of, plus apples, some livestock and some bees. It's all for a love of agriculture.

'Straight from my hand to their mouth,' says fruit grower Bill Gammie. Quarry Hill Orchards fosters a connection between the fruit they grow and the consumers who love it.

It has been almost 10 years since Brian Eucker received a life-saving liver transplant. Read his story, from orchard owner to organ donor advocate.

Visit western Pa's Apple Castle year-round for their home-grown apples, peaches and other produce (but don't leave without one of the Johnston family's doughnuts!)