Turkey Ridge Organic Apple Orchard

Gays Mills, Wisconsin

From the livestock rotationally grazing between the apple trees to the canned apple pie filling on the shelves of the on-farm store, diversification refrains throughout Turkey Ridge Organic Apple Orchard's business philosophy. Based in the rugged countryside outside Gays Mills, Wisconsin, and built on a core commitment to organic apple growing, Turkey Ridge is an inspiring example of innovation in agriculture, redefining and reinventing itself with each growing season.

Since the very first apple tree plantings in the late 1980s, Turkey Ridge has been an organic operation. The original founder, Richard Gainor, wanted to plant and run a certified organic apple orchard from the start, focusing on disease-resistant varieties of apples. Over the following twenty years, the farm underwent a variety of evolutions with the realization of the labor intensity and manpower needed to run an organic orchard, which led to the formation of the worker-owned Midwest Organic Fruit Growers Cooperative in December of 2003. A core shareholder group of three individuals with various helping hands and supporters today manage Turkey Ridge.

"By forming the cooperative, we wanted to demonstrate that such a worker-owned co-op is really the only option for large scale organic fruit growers in the Midwest, given that it is a full-time job for one person to manage about 1,000 trees, yielding around 3,000 bushels," comments Alex Person, one of the three core shareholders along with Faye Rogers and Greg Welsh, all of whom live in the farmhouse on the property.

Turkey Ridge is made up of 289 total acres, with about 75 orchard acres containing eight thousand apple trees, with the remaining acreages in woods, pasture and growing fields. "We focus on growing 22 varieties of disease resistant apple varietals that will mature at different points during the growing season to extend our sales," Alex explains. "Williams Pride matures first at the end of July and Enterprise needs a frost to ripen around mid-October. Other disease-resistant varieties we've found grow well include Priscilla, Prima and Freedom."

The co-op's underlying commitment to organic apple growing fuels the manual labor needed to run such an organic operation. "Growing organic apples is a labor-intensive challenge," explains Alex. "In mid-summer, for example, half of the green apples need to be removed to increase the size of the final apples, otherwise all the apples would be very small. Conventional orchards use various sprays to get half the apples to fall off; however, we thin the trees by hand and we also hand-harvest," Alex adds, who himself picked about 60 percent of this year's harvest.

From fungus to bug invasions, different problems arise throughout the year that require different pest management strategies. "There really isn't one right way to run an organic orchard as these pests vary tremendously geographically." Turkey Ridge aims to manage the farm holistically, innovating ways to manage pests and process to both grow soil fertility and diversity business yields.

One new pest management strategy Alex introduced this past season, building on a variety of research he read, was rotationally grazing five pigs, nine sheep and 1,200 chickens on a half acre, building new fencing and moving the animals to a new half acre plot every three to four days. "The chickens pick up bugs and the pigs eat grubs, till up the soil and add manure," explains Alex. "The sheep eat the windfall apples that fall to the ground which is a very important part of orchard management and our farm plan as every apple that falls needs to be removed as various bugs invade these apples and become pest sources for the next growing season." Constantly moving the animals is a key element of this strategy because if they were left too long in one spot, the sheep would start chewing the trees and the pigs would root up young trees. At the end of the season, some livestock will be kept for breeding for the following year and the rest processed for meat sales and the co-op members' own use.

The bulk of Turkey Ridge's apples go into cider and cider vinegar, both of which the facility is licensed to process on-site, primarily sold wholesale to loyal food cooperative customers in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Additionally, apples are processed at a local commercial kitchen facility into jellies, apple syrup and the co-op's newest value-added venture: apple pie filling and frozen apple pies. "We've found the value-added mark-up on these processed products to be much more profitable," explains Alex. A growing loyal customer base continues to grow retail sales through the on-farm store at Turkey Ridge which is open seasonally from August until early November. This means workers don't need to spend time away from the farm at farmers' markets, with customers making annual apple pilgrimages from Chicago, Deluth and Iowa.

Other diversification efforts include a pick-your-own squash and pumpkin patch and cord firewood during the fall season. "We planted a couple acres in asparagus, raspberries and strawberries that will come on-line next year that will enable us to open earlier. We've also started supplying morel mushrooms to Organic Valley Family of Farms (CROPP Cooperative) in the spring as morels can typically be found under apple, ash and elm trees," adds Alex. Wreaths made from Curly Willow and harvesting the herb echinacia are also in the farm diversification plan. "We've found it much easier to make a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there than trying to make all our money from just the apples."

Balancing a manageable workload while sustaining a profit remains an on-going challenge for Turkey Ridge. Alex, Faye and Greg cut back their production load this past year to ensure they could deliver on orders. Greg also works for Organic Valley and Alex takes on a variety of jobs during the off-season including long haul trucking. Still, apples remain the core passion of Turkey Ridge. "I think I touched every apple in some capacity before it left the farm this season. Sometimes twice," says Alex with a smile.