Organic apples.
When Joe Fahey planted his first fruit trees in his backyard, he was just learning about organic. He fell for the flavor and loved the challenge of growing organically.
Now he’s tending 20,000 apple trees at his family-run orchard, Peck & Bushel Organic Fruit Co. Offering pick-yourown and prepicked apples, the orchard is typically open for selling on weekends starting the last weekend in August for early varieties and selling until they run out of apples, typically mid-October.
Peck & Bushel at 5454 County Road Q, Colgate, has about 20 varieties of apples. This year it has added baked goods to the offerings. It is planting 3,000 to 5,000 new trees every year and adding other fruits, including pears and berries, with plans for sales in the future. Picking updates are available on its Facebook page.
Backyard to business
I have a medical background, in nuclear medicine technology, and that’s what I did for a number of years. All the while, I was trying to figure out how to grow organic apples and different fruits on a smaller basis in our backyard.
I did that for about 10 years, then we had the opportunity to purchase a little bit of acreage. We’ve been expanding ever since. I’ve been full-time orcharding for almost five years. It’s a lot harder commercially than in the backyard. I think we’re pushing 20,000 trees.
A labor of love
It’s a crazy amount of work. It’s not work if you love doing it, but it is timeconsuming. We average out here at least 10 hours a day for sure, sometimes 12 hours-plus. Before we were orcharding, we took the weather for granted. Now we live by the weather.
Patience and planting
We planted our first trees in 2010. We had a small harvest in 2011, set up tents by the road and sold fruit. Then in 2012, we had a freeze out, so we didn’t have a crop. Ever since then we’ve been slowly expanding and getting more trees.
We built what we call an “apple shack” by Highway Q. Three years ago we start with ed work on the current barn. It’s a progression.
Life would be a lot simpler without the orchard business, but I do not regret it one bit. If I knew everything I know now when I started the orchard, I don’t think I would’ve done it. It is too big. There’s something to say about blind ambition and taking the leap.
All things delicious
We just put in a full commercial kitchen. We’re doing all the baking, and this will also be a little bit of a learning experience. We will have goodies like caramel apples, slab pie, every week.
Picking favorites
We have a couple new Honeycrisp hybrids that are new to the area, Wisconsin Honeycrisps. One of the parents is Honeycrisp and the other parent is unknown, but they’re incredible apples.
Riverbelle, we pick the week before Honeycrisp, and it is similar, almost like pop rocks in your mouth. It may be our most popular apple here, even over Honeycrisp. This will be our second year it. It’s really new.
This year’s crop
It’s a very nice crop. Every year, you’re thrown a bit of a curveball. This year was an extremely wet spring and summer. Organically, that makes it difficult to manage disease, but we have our largest crop ever and we’re excited to start picking.
Research and planting
There is a lot of research that goes into pulling the trigger on 1,000 trees. We’ve made a couple of mistakes.
All about organic
Once I put my first couple trees in the ground and I was able to harvest some fruit, I was shocked at how different the taste was. The eating experience was so different from what you can get in the grocery store. I would try them against other conventionally grown fruit and I was shocked at how I could make my fruit taste growing organically.
The organic part of this is a really important part. There is a reason there aren’t many organic orchards around. We may be the largest in the upper Midwest, and there’s a reason. There is a great amount of risk.
A family business
This is 100% with support from my wife (Jenny), who still works full time as a CPA. She’s got her hands in just about every aspect of the operation here. She’s as big a part of this as I am. We have two kids. One is going to a freshman in high school and my daughter is a freshman at UW-Madison this year. They’re here every day in summer.
An apple a day
I’m constantly tasting. I probably enjoy the first apple of the season a little more than the rest. (Typically, that's a Zestar.) When we run out, we run out. We try to save a little for ourselves to get through early winter.
Be kind to the apples
It is difficult to take a walk through the orchard some days after pick your own, but it is part of the business. We want people to experience how fruit is grown and have a good time and pick the fruit off the tree.
We want people to respect the trees and the fruit and not break branches. If you pick it, we want you to eat it in the orchard or take it home with you.
If people knew how much it took to grow that one apple, they wouldn’t throw it on the ground, that’s for sure. But you can’t have it both ways, and we want people to experience apple picking.
Go-to resource
I’m doing a lot of my own experimentation with organically approved products, and during the off season, I spend a lot of time looking at university studies. …
For starting, I think Cornell University probably has the best resource now, an organic apple guide. You can download it in PDF from the university website.
Fork. Spoon. Life. explores the everyday relationship that local notables (within the food community and without) have with food. To suggest future personalities to profile, email nstohs@journalsentinel.com.