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| The retail center at Oakwood Fruit farm |
It's a pleasure on a beautiful autumn day to visit an apple orchard. This past Saturday we traveled an hour northwest to Oakwood Fruit Farm, which has nothing to do with Oakwood Village, where I work.
Oakwood Fruit Farm is an amazing place. There are 180 acres growing 20 different kinds of apples. There is a vineyard and they raise Angus beef cattle. They have a bakery and sell apples through their store and wholesale.
It's more than a century old, started in the early 1900s according to the farm's website by Albert Louis. The fourth generation of that family, Judy, was the person who gave me permission to walk into the orchard to take pictures. Her son and his wife are now the fifth generation working on the farm.
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| Only a few stray apples left. |
We took the back roads through the countryside after U.S. Highway 14 got us to Lone Rock, climbing the hills on narrow two-lane roads surrounded by a rainbow of color on trees and swirling on the breeze.
While it's family run, it is a big operation. There is a large production facility to sort and pack apples plus a bakery making all sorts of delicacies including pumpkin and apple cider donuts.
We were there shortly after it opened. Within minutes, aisles in the store were bustling with customers picking through apples, desserts, honey, maple syrup, cheese, wine, plus a variety of hand-crafted gifts.
In the orchard trees are braced and reinforced to withstand high winds. Their website says over the last 20 years all trees have been grafted on dwarf or semi-dwarf root-stocks. Grafting gets more value from the tree bearing fruit because it preserves the value of cross-pollination with the right characteristics.
The wide variety of apples means the orchard starts picking in mid-August through late October. The retail shop is closed January through mid-August. I don't know why it took us so long to make the trip; while there are plenty of orchards closer to home, none we've visited so far equal the Oakwood Fruit Farm.
All photos by David Mossner October 22, 2022
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