Sit a Spell - Apple Barn

Welcome back to Sidis Fail. In the words of my sister Crystal she always says, boy do we have a treat for you today. And we do. We are in severe volatiness at the apple barn and we're gonna just dive into all things about the apple barn.

We've already been on a tour and so we can't wait to tell you what we have learned. I am Megan Brown, Extension at UTHSU, Extension Asia and Meg's County. And I'm here Crystal Blankenship, UTHSU Extension and Cumberland County and we have not one but two very special guests. Would you like introduce yourself special guest number one?

Oh I'm Larry Mitchell. I'm the county extension agent and county director in Meg's County and I have to work with Megan so. Okay you're gonna do that over now. I'm gonna do it like that.

I'm gonna do it like that. I'm gonna do it like that. She probably will. I will.

And our other very very special guest even more special than Larry Mitchell. Oh would you like to introduce yourself? I don't know about that. Go back to here from the apple barn born and raised here.

I grew up on the farm and we're just so thankful to have you all out so thanks for being here. Well we're just thankful to be here. This place is spectacular. Right and we got to go on a tour earlier and I feel like I've grown up coming here even though yeah I have.

I haven't so and hearing the story behind it has been great and so we just want to dive into that. What you were telling us on our tour of how this all began like because it didn't start out to be what it is now right? That's true. Certainly the plan was not to be quite the apple in the prize that it is now.

It was a family farm and still it's a family farm. We all worked together here but we had to be kind of back operation in my father's farm system in the local town in Severeville and it was bought as a hobby farm. We raised two boys and just kind of play around with some beef down tobacco and things that were going on back in the day the late 70s as far as agriculture in our area. We had a really significant crop there tobacco one year more one year worse than others and a local extension agent named Joe Woods was a good friend of mine my father and they came out and just did some soil testing and looked at how really wonderful the fruit trees were doing in the garden and everything that that was working hard to grow except for the crop tobacco and he recommended to do the transition and do the roadside fruit stand and back in that day that was just not real feasible because that was working at the bookstore and doing other things.

So as we researched it more and transitioned a bit more we got a little more invested with the University of Tennessee with Dr. David Lockwood which was also a good friend of mine and my father's and he still this day helps me in the orchard and planning for what pests and fungicides and things that we have to deal with on a basis in the south growing apples but it's kind of interesting transition at that point because we were not planting it and then it just kind of grew in a tourist destination town that people were going to the National Park so we had the Visible Ship coming by but it was very much out in the country the apple barn was in the age of the town of Severeville and got in working for tourism trade was all taking place so it was kind of a reached event that you could have tourism stopped so we just kind of started at that point in the strong leaps and bounds really since that work. And we love the UT Extension connection and I don't know if you want to speak any on that being the ag agent? Well I think you know I always think it's important in terms that extension is connected with something that's successful to me as what this is taking place but you also did you study at University of Tennessee?

I sure did. I was an undergrad there as an agricultural economics major and when we started the process of me going to school that was the idea of the actual fit at the university that fit into that operation and we're looking at value-added agriculture and it was just like you're getting that's what we do. It's been a process and we're not just growing apples we're trying to make out but we're doing fruit wines we're doing farm raised products here that people we want to have a family experience at a tourist town but it's also something that locally obviously we know we're making a product here that we're doing things we feel like the correct way the right way the old way the farm way well that wasn't always an in vogue and popular trend more efficient to just go back and go label and send somebody out to do your things and we start doing we're squeezing our own side or we're doing our own apple butter and we're partnering with local people and I don't think it's one of our favorite people to talk about. We want to rally farms other folks that are doing things the right way that are in our community we believed in when Tennessee products came along we wanted to be the first to join into that that's what our customer likes and we have to provide that they want something local they don't want something if they're at their farm market in Ohio or Michigan or Florida they're getting something that's truly a unique product to here so if we're not growing it we're trying to source it through someone that we actually know that's someone we actually trust and the other products we're making them here on the farm so when that came back in style the farm made products it really helped us know their business but that's been kind of a fun transition to watch and we just hope to continue to make our own products and let them one of the lines we used always say see smell and taste the fruits of our labor and so that can take the product from growing the apple to processing the apple to actually making that value added transition that's one of the things that we always have done but I learned a bit more efficient route through Dr.

William Park the guys that helped me at the university to know what the true science of value of agriculture is where how do you decide you should only grow the fruit you should only have the fresh fruit you should only process it to make the better margin on that fruit so that the first thing we're doing is we can sell fruit year round we have dry apples we have apple butter this can in a way that will last for several months we also have the fresh cider we can freeze and so we're trying to diversify ways that the value added part of it we're not only such a seasonal business we're only a figure on which we're people can come enjoy picking fresh fruit which is great and that's a fun stuff for people that we can do it year round here because of the process that we kind of cultivated and learned through that connection value added agriculture what I'm coming in and I retained it that became kind of a tagline and a cool thing to say when a few years ago but that's just what we've always done that you grow something you do through the full process you let people watch it and that's that's a lot of fun to watch not just apple products with candy products and the wine products and the ice cream and the things that that do still all include the apple skiing at the apple bar and apple will be involved in every single process we do but to be able to do it in such a diversity of ways that that allows it to be kind of fun that in the summer months early summer apples not in season so we can still have things going on that the kids that are out of school can come enjoy their summer break and have fun and see what agriculture is about a lot of kids come here and they're seeing one of my tractors I want to see a tractor there can see something going on that something's being grown and where the stage during the summer we're doing a lot of thinning and pruning or we pruning winter but actually we're doing a lot of active agricultural practices in the summer it's so fun to see somebody kind of forward and say well I've seen an orange grow but I've never seen an apple grow I've never seen this so it's an experience for them outside of the normal so when we came in you were actually talking about there being somebody from UT out back you were like hey there's people here from UT what were they doing here what was it and what were they doing here well they've done a lot of years I couldn't even say the whole podcast to tell you all the questions we've done with UT and how much they've inspired the actual design of the orchard the shape against the hill irrigation specifications spray guidelines things that help us in our unique climate but today we're working on a very unique project that's Dr. David Lockwood and any culture and those folks are hitting up a Intellis spray project and what that means I used to use a 500 gallon tank to spray the entire orchard we're very cognizant of what the latest spray guidelines and what we do in the south but it's very clear that we got growing organic apple in the south and it may be appealing to the general public so we have to utilize the practices that we know in ex-applet applications of fungicide insecticide and doing them in the most efficient way I had no idea the impact of the university would have but this Intellis spray process was a significant investment if you were to purchase it on the open market but through the research in the last two years in connection with Clemson and NC State but headed up by the University of Tennessee Davis to have it is now available through local John Deere dealership network all across the country that is a process that Intellis spray will actually have a ground speed laser that shows exactly how fast I've traveled the tractor it's also a radar that shows the the foliar canopy of the apple tree so it measures as the speed I'm going and also the canopy density at the time of the spray so if I'm applying a dorm at all where there's very low foliage the solenoids will actually open and close at each tree limb that I passed and will admit a there's a literally a spray that will apply just to that thicker localized piece of fruit we want a piece of foliage or a piece of the tree we want to treat at the time so I went from spraying between 1500 to 2000 gallons per 10 acres to spraying less than 500 gallons per 10 acres. It's a tremendous amount of savings for us cost savings and there's a lot of great research that shows that that's free drift and things that you're impacting in our environment that are beyond the actual fruit we're very much directly targeting the pest or targeting exactly what we're doing and we're helping the the expense and the end of the day because of obvious materials are quite expensive you know I think that's something that a lot of people wouldn't not even think about University of Tennessee particularly or other universities being involved in that and how that's helping you on your products and how that's helping you as a Tennessee product producer I think a lot of times people think of the university as just well that's a college or that's the university and don't think about what they're doing out in the communities to actually help producers. And I agree that part of the thing one of the funny anecdotal things that a lot of local farmers and things will say oh the university folks they may not know what's relevant or they may not know they over sell something and when you really get down to the truth of the matter it's it's where it all comes from and that research that is funded is what allows us to be efficient and it's a it's a tremendous resource for the apple barn and for those that utilize that and I think that yeah that you can over spray you can overdo things but the goal of the university's research project is to limit those things and to make it where it's feasible for someone that may not be able to go out and invest in infrastructure and and the ability to know okay we only need to spray this many parts per million on this leaf they now have the research approved in the east-east so now these little growers they only have a hundred trees or ten trees you can benefit from that same absolute true data that is produced from what this research project and they're doing others of course all across the state and we're just thankful that they chose us to be a part of that and it's it's just helped us tremendously I know that it will other growers for sure it's something I was thinking about and we're like we're talking the same time because we're excited we were in the apple room that this is tied into the ag part of extension well you'd mention we were asking how that worked and the pasteurization said well you may not be interested in that we're like totally interested in because we're our jam family literally we're the family can see we're science so food safety how products are developed that's all like we love that and then you're talking about educating young people so that's the bringing in 4-H and tying all those things together so it's like you've got an extension operation going on here at the apple barn and something I love too is you're in the busyness of the city and it's like when you turn down this road all of a sudden you're not even though I know you are but it's just like you just stepped off of you know like you're it's a totally different field I totally different feel once you turn down that road there a totally different feel like okay I'm I'm out in the country now and there's people coming and it's busy it's a business that you're right it is a totally different feel I'll tell you a funny story about that back in the day when we moved here this road was named Lonesome Valley Road and it was a home back here and my father we were named Riverbend Farnes at Lonesome Valley that was named the Farnes well when Gary Wade a local mayor purchased at Treckland that we want to go to hotel he saw the apple operation in quite successful and he put in for us to change the name to apple valley roads and now you're depending on apple valley road and my father would always reluctant because he said this is what some valley but it was an honor to get go to apple valley and see all the apple trees to change but that was kind of the progression instill you feel that's the goal when you come back here is it's not just a fan of foreign we wanted to feel like a fan of foreign and we we try to preserve that and really that way people can see fruit being grown and processed and picked and season and doing things and so that's that's kind of ironic that you mentioned that because the actual road name was Lonesome and I love that you've got you can see the apples growing up on the hill but you said preserve you know the way things looks like talk about the bollering because I know we were fascinated in looking at all things Martin I know crystal said you can't would you say hard imagine cattle come through here but then you can see it at the same time and then he was like here's the horse stalls and you're like oh I see it now sure yeah it's a real centerpiece to our farm and we're really proud of it it's well over hundreds old now we have that uh i've been saying it's hundred years old for almost 120 years now we're in 120 years but the barn was built and uh mr maulin nor Roger maulin nor was the original farm said owner here and he had a portable salt mill that came in and cut in the wall that weren't he chestnut uh you know where we chestnut is no longer species that is is a nice and so it is really a thing that people come in and see that look at that structure um it would break all of our hearts uh we had a fire scare about 10 years ago and we were very adamant about doing fire separation systems in the barn after that point to make sure that it would go up very quickly with a little more like that so it's it's been the thing that we can be really proud of and show that the word is always word with the bulk he was and I think that's kind of interesting to somebody that's it's kind of in history or agriculture or have a family member or had a story or had something that they can kind of see a true old working barn that we did lay the plant floor down and one of the things that we had a lot of customers over the years that would come in they would say i'm cold in the winter or i'm it's hot in here and my father's favorite comment was it's a barn literally in a barn we have we've graduated from that and make it a bit more comfortable for everyone but we try to make sure that we preserve the original team of the original structure the original everything and the original home place that i grew up in is as close to where i grew up in as it can be as location as apple fritter being served out of the process.

of course, it's so good. so you mentioned you first you like your son apple on the carport and i if you want to say repeat exactly what you said but you talked about that progression of then adding the 30 the 30 pounds or the cup of cider and uh you know instead you know the you know sure yeah and i think i said the word it's kind of going to say organic growth but it was whatever you want to say the natural growth and this the demand of the actual customer to actually show up and want some cider want some apple experience when that began it was truly we had just a bit more fruit than we had to make so we were selling out of the carport uh you know a little whatever you want to call it like i was called a carport going up and we had a car table and about three or four half-pig bags and my mom and mex and pies and dad had a five-gallon ham dress and so on the weekends dad would be a few judge of cider that would make us about four gallon judge of cider and so that was basically to provide the neighbors some fresh apple goodies and treats and just get our feet went in that we just had a few apple trees at that point and then when we grew toward we thought about cleaning out the barn we had a little more fruit than we could sell as it was just straight fresh fruit so that made a little more cider made a little more pies and then that's where the natural progression of value-added agriculture became an assessment okay now we've got to cross the fruit now we've got the cans of things now we have to put things up to not waste the fruit so now that that inverse has changed and we don't care to share we have great partners and growers there's no secret we cannot grow all of the fruit that we sell because we do make everything on site that we possibly can apple stock cakes right apple pie, apple butter, apple candies, can the apples the apple cider is tremendous demand our quantity of pounds of fruit we squeeze every year so now we have what we want to make sure is local growers but his good friends that he just turned 87 he's got a lot of great grower friends that we know we can count on having local fruit that we have generally in the tiny community of Cates Chappell Tennessee he would mind me mention his name Lawrence Manning this is one finest menu of meat and he grows everything but he has not a greater he doesn't have a processing piece of equipment he has about an apple tree so he brings them to us and trusts us to sort them out as processing apples as great a fruit as candy apples and things of that nature what a great partnership I think it is for him and us both that we have a local supplier so they know what's growing right here but also he has a way to market his fruit where he doesn't have to trade it out in front of sale against the big boys what I thought was really cool when we were touring we were looking out back and he said you have 10 to 12 000 apple trees and y'all they're all not you know it's out of my own so my next question to it was how did I get picked so if you don't mind just talking us through that process of you know how they get from tree to here and then we just you know brought out back but then how there's no waste you know every part is used because I think that is just really cool too sure sure when it comes to picking season my brother and I would take a watch of through the duration of the year picking season is a little more labor intense and it's very steep I know the funny story I'm 43 now my mother works here with us and every time I get off the track we're shooting like sure I'm still in one piece because it's extremely steep piece of room state that we're growing apples on and what we discussed earlier about getting the fruit off the tree it's off the tree it's off pick by hand that's a very popular shining job you want to pick out? In the upper 80s and you have a 42 pound picking bag strapped to you and you're applying the six-foot ladder it's very a labor intense but the issue within the exciting problem I guess is that you're you cannot mechanically harvest this fruit it's been tried in the past in large commercial orchards but you bruised the names for so badly that you've worked all year to have a pretty apple and then when you mechanically harvest it just is not pretty in its off-ridge depth so we were committed to hand picking the fruit we moved it into a 20 bushel bin that goes behind their tractor and we bring them out one of the time and directly into the cooler we use that removes the field heat so it preserves the apple we do not spray them with a wax or anything we just get them cool and after they're cooled off we take them through a grading process and that would eliminate some of the not so pretty fruit if it's were used by some reason or as a damage part we removed that fruit then we were going to the sizing conveyor so when the sizing it goes so big pretty ones going to shelf you're sold as fresh apples to the medium ones that go into candy apples just maulins go back into apple cider because back in the cooler and as we get ready to make a micro-sided we bring about 18 to 20 of those bins down to try to hopefully get about 2,000 gallons of cider and everything full. So yeah we just use the whole fresh fruit just a whole apple squeezed and everybody asks how do you get apple cider well it's it's a blend of a sweet tart and aromatic apple that is dad's secret recipe there's no additives or no anything but if you make it out one variety you'll have a very flat not very tasty size so he loves to use a tart apple like a granny smith or one set loves to use an aromatic apple like a red delicious that smells wonderful and most red delicious do not have a tremendous amount of flavor so then we bring in a gala or some kind of flavor fruit really brings up a nice sweet finish to the side that means said when we squeeze all that apple up we have a great amount of juice we come up we also have a great amount of sweet apples that need to have something then to them and that goes out to the incubator and we take that straight over to the pasture and feed the canopy because it's counting big and they run over the tractor and we'll try to put them to get there and so it makes for a nice treat for the for the cattle and that pasture feel over.

I just think it's amazing because nothing is going to waste and I just love that so much and you may have said this and I apologize if you did but let's talk about just the the growth you know you said it just kind of organically grew but you went from you know dad cranking out a few gallons a cider on the car pore to you just said two thousand gallons um 30 apple pies earlier didn't you say something like two thousand gallons a day? Correct yeah two thousand I'm going to repeat that two thousand gallons of a day that is a lot of apple cider. It is what we have found ourselves in transition now is that two thousand gallons a day is our maximum real production efficiency that we can do and we've actually outgrown that a little bit we do that twice a week during season once a week in the off season so to say we do that every day is a little bit I'm going to misrepresent that that's not a daily operation but when we as soon as when people come to the apple bar now they will look in and see that we don't have a lot of fresh fruit because we literally use fresh fresh fruit it's big here when we have that fresh fruit here this one we really crank up our capacity we're really making that two thousand gallons every time we squeeze and that's it we work on five day work week so when I squeeze on Tuesday I joke on Wednesday and I clean up and I squeeze on Thursday and joke on Friday well Monday is also a prep day so if we're we're in full operation in five day work week for cider production but we're really only to be clear and honest that that two thousand gallons is going to be on a plus a week rotation because we have a chance to wear it. I mean only only still a lot of sire and I want to come back to the sire because I have another question about it but Megan was talking about the thirty-five pounds and now you were telling us on a hot day on a good hot day.

We can get close to seven thousand pounds on a day but five thousand would be more of a realistic normal you know weekend day but we we've found that that's kind of our capacity we need to be prepared for as far as what we're ready to crank out and the thing that I think people appreciate and like is that the process where the recipe has not changed since the late 70s the first five was made before we actually opened the way I should open the 81 so whatever you want to take that back to the recipe was much older than that and it is a really old family recipe that is handmade and we do not bring in dough or frozen products or anything so that's still a pretty crafty kind of cool product that we make that people don't want us to change. So what are you saying folks? On a normal day five thousand fried pies and there's these four I only saw women I don't know if there's any man back here making them or not but four little women back here just rolling out pie dough and with their hand rolls right yeah every day five thousand a day that you said they make them fresh every single day um they there's not any carried over from like yesterday today. That's one thing that's a big leaver and we're all believers in that we don't do like they old pies we do not sell a lot of the growers that we're friends with they have a discounted pie the next day we just do not if you come into the apple or buy a pie it was made that day we do not have a lot of lats for it and we just go to the first five that we want to make sure if you walk in and you're the first customer or the last customer that pie was rolled we made that day and that's a common common question people want to know how does this pie win is it made you can tell them honestly look them in the eyes made that they they're happy they want that pie they would buy extra for me instead of the one from the day before.

That's going to be one of my most common questions now I don't know that I'll always ask before but now it's not because you know that I'll borrow that make them every day back to my question about the cider we were talking about you um you do not pasteurize but you do have a process to make it stable and safe. That is correct and that was a great collaboration with the university as well they created a school and it was to help us a lot but any other growers invited to come to this school it was a local polluting in here in vidney vortu and um dr sandy 80 uh william orus and octrade lockwood were the presenters in that school and we learned that um paturization is to create something safe it's a five-hour reduction in bacteria there's other methods other ways to achieve that um flax pasteurization uh ozone light uh traditional heat pasteurization and as well as ozonation and so when we we researched it uh there's a lot of concern that put smaller producers out of business because when the federal mandate after the accodolus care and a many years ago on wall farms in california that was a big problem for apple releases but the the answer to that was okay we are going to come up with a way to do a five-long reduction in bacteria without having to pasteurize because if you pasteurize you'll be you're becoming more of a what I would call a grocery store uh highly filtered juice product instead of good old fashioned cider and it's funny the generation that that I'm a part of it younger a lot of them have never had true just getting squeezed apple cider and they're fascinated like it's into a fresh apple so we wanted to maintain that unique farm product instead of just bowing down saying we're going to pasteurize so when we went into the the process we decided to ozonate it gives you the five-long reduction in bacteria usually the shelf stable it's it's a product lasso a little longer so when you buy the product you take it home and put it in refrigerator it's not going to get puffy and turn it too quickly and blow the lid off so it's given us a unique process that we can actually sell good old fashioned apple cider that's not pasteurize it's never been heated and I can promise you I had apple cider every day my entire life it changed the flavor it just actually bubbles a ozone bubble fruit just as if your major aquafinarian water producer that's how they purify their water and it's how we purify the cider so we were saying and I can't remember if it was on record or not we're saying you know meganar fcs agents larry's an ag agent I get excited about the nerdy fcs stuff but I think that's fascinating because being fcs agents and growing up you know people are really scared of things that are not pasteurized today they get they see that and it just makes them a little about it so knowing it's safe is a big deal and you know I mean that's to me it is as a matter of fact we have to go through some local loopholes because we do not pasteurize well our local food inspector has a clipboard essentially in that clipboard it says okay we're an apple cider producer do we pasteurize but he checks no one that we have to the inputting level the warning level is is it's to those that are you know a compromise young elderly this product could be dangerous that's pretty scary words it is you have to put it you have to have it on a certain size but label so we researched further we said well we invested in this equipment we were doing our part to make it safe and we really need the label and so we had to work hard to get around that because even though that we did our research in the university helped us to achieve our vote that there was a fine line of it was not worded properly it should have been worded five-law production of bacteria versus patent we it's true we're not pasteurizing so the inspector was correct to say we had that warning like sure but we had to just do a little more for the research and the university can help me with that I thought the fakeizer was in that process it's just so interesting that's like I said and I really am interested in agriculture side of things too but you know it's just super it's fun it's definitely fun so I'm kind of thinking about the complex here I don't know if anybody I listen and has never been here because I know everybody in my circle we all know the apple barn but name all that that you've got here on the complex sure sure we can talk about that we started with I was just in the car for fresh apples apples are keying here so apples will always be everything relative to apples when we went and got into the pies inside or it was such a small operation the next progression we started the year-round business was our farmhouse restaurant we grew up my brother and I grew up in the farmhouse and we moved out in 1986 it took one year to transfer it into a farmhouse restaurant we preserved all the original rooms that we work everything but we have a kitchen in the back of the garage carquere where we initially started the apple operation and that was to be also apple themed enterprise but it's very much a country meal you sit down to some really good chicken and dumplings and items like that but it's pretty with apple freezers and apple butter to start the meal and apple would you look it's a great land of getting to the exact recipe because it's basically apple juice and some other fruit juices that make it better apple would you look and have to know if y'all came up with that we did okay that's great that's always been my most remember and in fact when I was at church last night and I had a lady ask me what I was always asked when I'm doing for work and I said tell her I was going she said you're gonna have some of that apple juice that's the first thing she said you're gonna get to have that amazing how many people live it I never got tired everybody said you must be sick of apples I say no I'm gonna get glass of cider every day that's worse everybody gets a peppercut if you get your cider how's that gonna start my my day off but but after that opened it gave us an opportunity to have a year-round customer base that was not just fresh fruit driven as the farm market model kind of would stand and normally be and after we got past that we were able to grow a little further and we got into producing you know more of the pies and more of the the things that we're doing here on site and we got into making some candies that weren't just directly caramel apples and candy apples but we have probably the unsung heroes of our operation is I would say we have part the finest candy kitchen in the southeast it's got one of the jobs when I graduated I graduated from UT and economics and we were going to open another store and by that says well we know every recipe we know how to do everything at the apple bar except how to make candies I want you to go be a chef in the candy kitchen for my first job at a college and I thought I'm ready to go tractor I'm ready to well I feel like I don't want to do and I had to put a wide-air on our candy process and we really do the most old-fashioned handmade copper kettle divinity fudge is hand-willed hand-beaten we do stick candy that's we're the only people in the country that actually do it by handing more there's rote machines that do it you should see it done in gout and berg it's similar to a taffy process but it's a really hands-on fun shop to stop in and nobody thinks about that kind of the app more thing about the cider and the fruit pie so when we started to firstify and do more that just let us grow our season let us do more things as you go down further we do our own we have a creamery on site and it's homemade hand churned ice cream and we have around 20 to 30 flavors at any time we started specializing in a good old homemade vanilla bean that goes a scoop right on our fried apple pie so that makes our mouth water we talk about later you're speaking my love like a picture but we also have some apple varieties and some fun things for the kids and things that are in the creamery and you walk in the also to speak of the creamery the bakery and my mouth water and i'm talking about it we do a lot of like apple blackberry and apple walnut breads and cake-rins files that we make we walk by the bakery and you smell that it's unbelievable and they do a lot of cobblers and things made out of those cake rins but also you can buy a loaf of the bread and take home and as you get on down the sidewalk we also have developed into apple-worn winery that has been so much fun and one of the first week everything that's made there is made out of the apples it's an apple based everything there's a great based wine in the line of except for old fashioned Tennessee muscadine and the way that it grabs it it's like the mammal and papal you crack it into a mason jar of their old fashioned mason muscadine wine and it is a Tennessee grown muscadine it's grown in Granger county Tennessee and we have a great friend supplier over there it's still on fermentation for the first 40 hours so you really get that like you're riding into a mason. It's the best part of the muscadine. So we try to really do that Tennessee fruit and so everything's apple based but then we go and we have a lot of fruit wines we bring back apples for all great apple peach and raspberries and different flavors like that so it's a really really fun part of the operation and it's so fun to watch and go into the tank room you can see it behind glass and the fermentation to the lab and the wooden barrels into the bottom line and have labels and it's just everything's done right there so everybody can see it and you walk up and you have a sample of it then so that's that's a fun thing that has actually progressed into a near enterprise this our third year in a hard apple cider that is fascinating to me as well we do one for the University of Tennessee or the official producer of the University of Tennessee.

Because all the alumni there's an email that goes out then they were in a portion of every package of hard-sided that is bought goes back into the University of Tennessee. We've got that, I'll show you will take another tour on that show you where the packaging line for that is so that the hard cider has been a relatively new enterprise for us but it just seems to fit naturally customers love it and it's just a fun and similar flavor profiles. We have a just a gold-fashioned hard cider that is a little sweeter it's called southern cider and then we also have tons of of flavor for doing that, everything from sweet blends to a little more hoppy. We have a hot side of it, a very fun, unique, different item.

But as you walk down the property, the goal of the apple barn is to be a family-friendly enterprise. So if somebody wants to visit the cream, or if somebody wants to visit the hard side of the or the fresh side of the tree, then somebody may want to visit the next shop, which is a candle and Christmas shop. And it's just a really fun shop. You can watch candles being poured on side, and you can go in and get your Christmas ornaments, and things that are apple-worn specific, and you can get specific people that are visiting, and you want to see them here, and things like that.

It's been a lot of fun for folks. And then the part of the property is the apple-worn house, a grill. It's a restaurant we're very proud of that was built to really, just to be honest, to take the load off of the original farmhouse. My dad always says, it's a farmhouse, and if we add on anymore, it's not going to look like that.

So we didn't want to do that. We added that restaurant on. And there's other shopping opportunities on the farm. There's a board of us sporting facility that people can go and shop for fishing things, and clothing, and things like that.

So to say we've diversified this is a true statement, we really. But to keep apple as the king, there's been a tremendous amount of folks that in our neighborhood that trusted circle friends that come to us and say, we would love to put a t-shirt shop or a tourism driven. And if it's not has some relevance to the apple, or relevance to the farm, in some way we can tie it back in. We have been reluctant to do that.

So I think that's our mode of what we like to do, is keep it based on the historical, whether it's based on the land, the river, the farming, or the apple. Something has to be relevant for us to want to participate. Right. OK, back.

And you mentioned about all the enterprises you have, you said that your dad was about slow growth. Correct. Absolutely. When you look at the timeline, it seems like we're just one big operation right now.

But if you look at it from 1976 to where we sit now, that's plenty of time to grow slow in the size of operation we've had. Dad loves to say that we love to reinvent and add something. We love to always be on the forefront of doing things. But it could also be something that nobody, possibly, people would not notice.

When we planted a whole new section of Roostox, it was amazing how many people noticed that. We thought we were going from one set of trees to another, where they really noticed. But there was a pretty significant investment. I had irrigation, trellis, post, things to do.

And it was just part of the growth of the whole apple barn. It could be renovating one of the buildings that we tried to maintain reinvesting in our operation every year in some way. Some years much bigger than that. But we were pretty set on trying to grow.

But it's easy, I think, for saying younger way more. I guess, for me, but for my brother and I, two young fellas come in and get excited about, oh, wow. This many folks on property in October, if you come here in October, it's so exciting. It's we have sider, I was being picked.

The weather is beautiful. The concern I warn you is the parking lot of you, so full people parking room. And that's so exciting to grow up in and see. So it's easy to get vision-s So what's next?

Yeah, so I think that has been a good driver. And saying, well, it's slow. And we do this very slow, it's the way I can say. And I think that's one of the reasons we've been so successful is to not have that risk of one operation.

The whole farm depends on it, where we leverage ourselves in a way that it's a better work or else. So we've been able to grow in a way that suits us. And is it the most efficient? Maybe not for some big corporation.

But it really suits our family structure. And to say that's a family operation, I'd like to really highlight that. That my brother Kevin is here with me every single day. But dad and mom are here.

Oh, we already ran into your mom very first thing. And so we celebrate as I said birthday. And we just hope he keeps us going like he is. Because he's here.

And he loves to know about the orchard what's going on. And he said so many questions this morning for me earlier today about what we're next. Today what we're going to do in getting the orchard correct. If I have one block of apples that didn't turn out right, he wants to know what I did.

Well, obviously it was not his fault. That's right. Speaking of the orchard, I don't think that we have said the varieties that you do grow here. Sure.

We originally grew 16 varieties. We learned quickly that it's too many for our crops of acreage. Because as soon as one variety would mature, we would pick that variety. And everybody would get excited about that variety.

And then it's gone. So we have gone down to now what is the best in our growing region is a late ripening apple. Pink lady is a shining star. It's a ripens late.

And that helps us in this southern frost line. So if we get these beautiful days in the spring, and these apple blooms open up, then you get that one order. And it just makes you want to cry. You know you're not going to have a crop load.

We can push that balloon back just a few weeks. That's what we focused on. So we do have some Fuji. That's probably one of the greatest apples I think we grow.

And it's by design a very late blooming Fuji. Like, CandyO is a really fun apple that I like. We're trying to really promote it on the farm market show, because most people have never heard of a cameo. We buy into a little homegrown cameo.

That's a great sweet apple. If you like it, Gala, it means like that, but a lot better. And so. Is it crisp?

It's very crisp. Well, OK. CandyO, no to self. That's great apple.

We do maintain some tart apples just because of that sweet tart aromatic blend in our cider. We want to make sure we have that. So that wine sap is a great apple. And there are newer strains.

And I don't want to bore you with what we grow. There's called a wine criss, but just a more disease resistant southern apple is a wine sap. But it's just one of those names for it. But we try to focus on the, we do have some Gala Fuji.

We came here with a granny Smith wine sap. And Matsu is a tremendous variety. That's the last one that we put in. There's two strains of Matsu.

We grow. It's a big, beautiful, greenish looking apple. Some people call it a crisp in the grocery stores. But it grows really well in the south.

It's a late blooming variety, later blooming variety. And I've had two really good crop loads of that in the last couple years. I'm very new. This root stock, it's called a bed nine root stock.

So it's extremely dwarfing. And it's the most efficient. What they say now in apple farming is you want to grow light, not ground. You want to, or farm light.

So if the light penetration in your canopy is where the most efficient growth of apples are, the old big apple trees, you'd have beautiful apples on the outside of the canopy. But you climb in the inside of the tree. You're not getting sunlight penetration. You're not getting the spray material penetration.

So you're pretty much the same. So now apple trees look more like a very small, like a hedgehog almost. Now we're going to yield for acres, tremendous, much, much more. And we're just getting much prettier fruit.

And it works for a small orchard like we have, which is big to me that they care for. I don't want to take you the same small orchard. And I keep thinking, oh, that was an apple tree. And those little trees, man, they are, they're short, but they are loaded down with apples.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, they're a lot of those pick apples here. Yeah, sounds great. I make you room.

Yeah. I'll go in there. This is some cider. Let me say, I'll pick me in that person.

Eyes. I don't, nothing about picking apples on that mountain side sounds appealing to me. That's the same thing. That's the same thing as a big.

Got it. I feel like we have just worn you out today. Mm-hmm. Oh, none of this stuff.

That's cool. I came to the point. Well, I was just thinking about what you were talking about. People were being able to see.

And as I was coming back in out here, there were some folks standing watching, and I don't even know what to process there. And they said, look, they're making them one at a time. Probably don't pass. It might be, I don't know, but they made that call me.

They don't know. It sounded like maybe that was their first time here or something, but they were making the comment of, they're being made one at a time. I mean, I think that's pretty amazing. But the number of people that I've seen here, from time to time and that kind of thing, I don't know, I've probably been coming here 20 years.

And you don't hardly notice the amount of development and growth that you've had, just because of the way it's been done. Yeah. And I think really you said, you know, you wanted it to be a family-friendly atmosphere. And I think that is at the core and the heart of this area.

You guys, you know, make a thing, we make some on the first thing. She's taking out the window, Addison. You know, you said your daddy's out here, some wire and then you and your brother, and your family, you can tailor so important to you. And I think that that just trickles out across the whole, I had to say organization.

What am I trying to say? I would say, I loved it already. I love it even more now than I know the story behind it. You know, you know, if you want to be family-oriented and family-friendly, you know, I feel like that's a man.

That's the what has to be at the core adage, is that family. Well, lay it on to my three girls. And the thing that I love about growing up here is, my brother and I, we go jumping in forever. We do with that.

We jump on the tractor. We do things that, my kids maybe didn't get to grow up just going in. Jump in the outdoors. And so, as soon as my girls get out of school, they even go see dad, they won't come up here.

And that tickles me, dad, I love it. And they come up here and everybody, you know, welcomes them to come in and they put them to work on something. You know, they'll go to whatever chore past they can do. They love that.

That makes me happy to want to see that continue and the way we're doing. Just squeeze the shit heart. I love it. I love it.

Well, I will say that I do feel like a miracle or not really a miracle, but just something amazing has happened today. We've talked for how long? Well, we've already, we've failed 45 minutes and now we're 10 minutes in. So we talked about tonight.

And we didn't mention horses at all. Well, how in the world did that happen? We didn't get to talk about things again. So we got to talk about how.

So we didn't make it to horses. I didn't say that for the next one. I think we just need to mention why we would have talked about horses. Oh, well, yeah.

That's why we talked about horses. Well, other than being one of my favorite subjects and one kids favorite subjects. You know, kids don't or chosen for age and it's been involved in for age and was he was really involved. It's one of the outstanding 4-H families from Blunt County and Roger and Sandra Elder.

And they're the best folks in the world. And, you know, so it's been a pretty good deal in order to get to spend some time with them. I'm at State 4-H or show this year and see these kids and all that kind of thing. So that's why we've been talking about horses.

We've been talking about kids and horses. Kids and horses. That's all right. I'm trying to get into cutting horses.

Oh, all right. Did you cut my look? For those of you that don't know about Larry and Angel, he's a real cowboy. I mean horses are one of his life for Thanksgiving.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe more than people. But watch more.

But, and that's something though, when we started this podcast, we were talking about how we wanted to cross all the program lines. We blur them up and talk about everything. And this right here, we talked about 4-H, talked about agriculture, talked about our family consumer science stuff. That is exactly what we had in mind from the gate.

And I think this is probably the first time that we've talked about on the ground extension, but also the research of extension. And so, yeah, we've, so we don't have a checklist, but we did. We've checked them all today. So we appreciate it so much for having us.

Well, and to say our appreciation for the university and the outreach of extension is beyond, I would rather say that it's one of the most effective situations that has ever been acquired. I mean, the apple barn would not be without that extension. Without Dr. David Lockwood, without the actual processes that have, the different kind of a dream idea that came from the extension agent that Joe Woods and Dr.

Lockwood to the actual scene it through. And the, it's still to this day. And from 1976 to 2022, to see that still be that integral of a part, I wore my 10th seat shirt, they don't actually come and do it at the Parker College of Agriculture and to be one of the classes in talking about how what does the university mean? Well, it's meant a lot to us.

It's not just meant for me to be a place to go to school. You know, that was a tremendous part of it. It's that we're still doing it on going. My senior project was with Dr.

Park and we did it based at the apple barn. It was a day to collection, different things about how we do things at the apple barn. And it was a class ready for me. Let me take it, it really helped.

It was a relevant piece of data that we collected from that. May I say real life solutions? I feel like we have just absolutely worn you out. And I know, I have an angel who are like, we should have asked you about this.

Oh man, we'll have to come back. We do appreciate your time, your just everything. I do the tour, the telling us about the history, talking about you just the whole thing has been wonderful. And we appreciate you.

Well, no problem. Thank you all for taking the time to be in here. Thanks to anybody that was interested enough to listen to anything about the apple. Absolutely.

You might be surprised. So that's it for today and we'll see you next time.