The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Apples come many ways at Mercier
The Appalachian mountain range begins its ascent from the counties of North Georgia. Communities like Blue Ridge were established along the railroad lines that traveled the Toccoa River Valley, where residents and visitors enjoyed the advantages of crisp mountain air and abundant waterways.
Of all the crops grown in this area, apples are the stars. And the largest of the orchards that dot the area is Mercier Orchards, established by Bill and Adele Mercier in 1943, when they purchased 27 acres of land from Dr. C. G. Lloyd, owner of the Blue Ridge Pharmacy.
In the early years, fall would find Bill Mercier packing apples and putting them on the train to Atlanta or Alabama. In the 1960s, construction of a road to connect Blue Ridge with Copperhill, Tennessee, cut right through the middle of the orchard. Suddenly, the apple house had highway frontage, and the family opened a farm stand.
Now, the fourth generation tends the trees; produces apple juice, wine and hard cider; and oversees the farm store and bakery. David Lillard married into the Mercier family and, in 1997, he and his wife, Melissa, left their jobs in Atlanta to become part of her family’s business.
Lillard is the orchard manager, overseeing what grows on the family’s three properties, covering 300 acres. Fifty acres are used to grow strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, peaches and nectarines. The rest is cloaked in row after row of dwarf and semidwarf trees laden with apples of every hue, from green to deep purple.
“Our harvest starts in April with strawberries, which overlap with the blueberries, which overlap with the blackberries, which overlap with the peaches,” Lillard said. “We finish harvesting apples about mid-November. Depending on the harvest and demand, we can have our apples available through March and into April, just about the time we start harvesting strawberries again.”
The earliest apples are Polar Reds. Not necessarily good for eating out of hand, Lillard said they make great hard cider. “They’re more acid than sweet, and that is great for fermentation.”
Mercier Orchards began making hard cider in 2011.
Those early Polar Reds give way to a succession of apples that ends with the varieties that ripen the latest — Fuji, Granny Smith and Pink Lady.
In harvest season, Lillard travels the roads through the orchard every day. “I’m always very nervous as it comes to start harvest,” he said. “Looking at each variety, I have to decide, is this the right time to harvest this apple? Are the sugars right? What is the weather coming our way? It’s the hardest part of the business. But, once harvest starts, we work five days a week and it all seems to smooth out.”
Surrounded by apples, does Lillard enjoy eating them? Absolutely, he said, and he prefers them right off the tree. His favorite is the late-season Arkansas Black, which has a waxy, thick skin, providing an edge of bitterness to the sweetness of the flesh.
Lilliard said that, in an average year, the orchards produce between 75,000 and 100,000 bushels of fresh apples. He manages all of this with the help of a 10-person crew, many of whom have been with the farm for 30 years.
“But, our from-scratch bakery blows all that away,” Lillard said. He recounted the story of his grandmother-in-law, Adele Mercier, frying apple hand pies and selling them right out of the cast-iron skillet to those who came to the farm stand. “Now, we sell well over a million fried apple pies each year,” he said.
Those fried apple pies are sold in a huge farm store, where you can find everything from fresh local produce (including the orchard’s seasonal fruit) to a candy kitchen and a bakery turning out hot apple cider doughnuts and the orchard’s famous apple bread. You’ll even find stacks of dried apple wood, harvested from trees that have passed their peak production years.