We were driving back from Amish country this past Saturday with 40lbs of raw chicken breasts in the back of the car. As we passed thru Navarre something caught my eye - a fruit market/apple orchard with quite the espalier along the edge of their parking lot. This was one of those "turn the car around" moments, especially when I realized I'd been told about this particular creative bit of Apple tree architecture years ago by an orchard owner near us - Dave Stotler of Stotler Orchard.
We stopped at Sunny Slope Orchard, snapped some pics, went inside, bought some apples and candy, and I even got some onion sets for the garden. While not exactly prime Apple buying season, Sunny Slope Orchard had better tasting apples than I've been able to get at the grocery store for awhile now (although the lady who rang us up did say some of their apples for sale are from New York at this time of year) ! And unlike our local orchards, this place is open year round!
Even though we have a couple great orchards near us, I've told Brett I'd love to see the Amish country in fall and winter. Here's another reason - I'd love to see their cool espalier loaded with red delicious and golden delicious apples!
3 comments:
That is so neat! Thanks for posting, Jeph!
WOW! wonder how old the trees are, and how long did it take to get them that way?
I was wondering about their age as well. I need to go back to their site and read their history...maybe there's more info about it there. If you're up close and looking at the branches, trunks, bark, etc you can see they've had a LOT of pruning work over the years - lots of short little spurs/nubs of branches for lots of apple production.
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