COURTESY APPLE HILL ORCHARD
If it’s July, it’s time for cherry picking season at Apple Hill Orchard near Bayfield, Wisconsin. Bill Ferraro and his wife, Claudia, last year sold the orchard to Justin Sexton and Mackenzie Smith, who plan to continue growing the apples, plums, pears and, of course, cherries.
CLAIRE DUQUETTE
Before the apples, come the cherries, at least at Apple Hill Orchard near Bayfield, Wisconsin.
The orchard bears the name of Bayfield’s beloved fruit, but for a few weeks in the beginning of July, the orchard’s 700 trees ripe with sweet cherries win the most admiration.
This year, when cherry lovers return to pick their own or buy cherries already picked, they’ll also meet the new Apple Hill owners, Justin Sexton and Mackenzie Smith, who just bought the orchard from retiring Bill and Claudia Ferraro.
Justin, the head women’s soccer coach at Northland College, has worked seasonally at the orchard since 1998, when, as a Northland student, he spotted a “help wanted” sign on a bulletin board and headed up Highway 13 from Ashland to Bayfield – with no clue that someday he’d be a partner in owning the orchard.
In fact, Justin started at Apple Hill before it had cherries there.
Bill planted his first cherry trees 15 years ago when his neighbor Jack Erickson decided to chuck the trees he’d planted as an experiment and discovered the cherries were too high maintenance. He offered them to Bill, who uprooted the big trees and hauled them to Apple Hill, letting them grow, or not, on their own.
About half survived and Bill plunged into cherry tending, researching the hardiest cold-weather varieties. Cherries are not new to Bayfield, where the tart pie fruit have been cultivated for years, but the Ferraro orchard yields sweet cherries. The orchard hosts cavalier trees, which ripen first, and lapins. Bill was experimenting with skeena and kristin varieties, but the trees are still maturing.
While even a novice might know the taste difference between a Honey Crisp apple and a Golden Delicious, the same is not true for cherries.
“They taste just a little different,” Claudia says of the cavaliers and the lapins. “But unless you had them side by side, you probably couldn’t tell.”
The deep red cherries are rich in healthy antioxidants with a sweet, juicy flavor. “You could cook with them, I suppose,” Claudia says, “but the best way to eat them is just to pop them in your mouth.”
CLAIRE DUQUETTE
CLAIRE DUQUETTE
COURTESY APPLE HILL ORCHARD
CLAIRE DUQUETTE
Justin and Mackenzie have careers outside the orchard, which gives them some financial wiggle room when dealing with the issues of the finicky fruit. Mackenzie is head athletic trainer at Northland. “I was lucky she was assigned to women’s soccer; that’s how we met,” Justin confides.
Cherry challenges are many and the issues start with the woodland neighbors. As much as people love sweet cherries, so do deer, birds and just about any foraging creature. Bill tried to keep out the whitetails with a fence around the trees, but the sign proclaiming it a “deer exercise fence” tells the truth about its protective ability. Justin and Mackenzie let their three dogs out several times a day to discourage the robins, cedar waxwings and other birds targeting the fruit.
Then there are diseases and pests. Spotted wing fruit flies, peach tree borers and a fungus that causes the leaves to fall off the trees have all visited like plagues at various times. “I was a little lost,” Bill says of branching into cherries. “I was encountering problems I didn’t have with apples. But I reached out to the cherry growers around Traverse City, Michigan, and they were very helpful in figuring out how to combat the problems.”
The biggest worry, though, is something over which no grower has any control – the weather.
In the early spring, the cherry trees bud about two weeks before the apple trees. If the temperature drops below 25° F during this critical time, it’s all over for that year for the cherries. The Ferraros lost 15 percent of their cherry crop in 2016 after a night that hit 28° F when the budding started. Indeed, weather is the biggest factor in determining the harvest of almost any crop, but cherries in the North especially. In their best year, the Ferraros harvested 20,000 pounds of cherries; in their worst, only 1,000.
Despite the challenges, the new owners are committed to the sweet cherry orchard. Justin, who hails from Norwich, England, calls the Ferraros “his American mom and dad.” He and Mackenzie are counting on their expertise and advice as they take over. Lucky for them, the Ferraros only moved about a mile down the road.
“I call them all the time and ask questions,” Justin says with a laugh.
After he graduated from Northland, Justin lived in Alabama for nine years, where he coached soccer and helped start a semi-pro soccer club. But he made a pilgrimage north every year in October to help the Ferraros during apple season. “I never sold my house in Ashland, and I always knew I’d move back,” he says. “I love the relaxing way of life here. I missed the outdoors, kayaking, hunting and fishing. Moving back just unloaded a lot of stress.”
While Justin acknowledges that he and Mackenzie will have a challenge balancing their time between their jobs at Northland and the orchard, it’s one that they’re excited to take on.
In wishing the newcomers well, Claudia also chuckles kindly from experience. “And what he doesn’t realize is that he isn’t going to be able to plan and manage it, because there is so much that happens that you just can’t plan for.”
But Bill likely will be there, no matter what the newcomers weather. “While we’re financially separated from the orchard, our hearts are still there. As much as I swore at those trees, they’re still my babies out there.”
Claire Duquette and her husband, Terry Burns, whose hands are picking the cherries above, enjoy sampling all the fruits of their home region.