"Reality is no longer a liberal concept but is the
exclusive domain of the radical fringe."
We
are the Gougeon family. Our orchard is just a few acres,
the site of an old orchard going back more than 100 years.
About half of the existing orchard was planted on the land
of Melinda and Richard Gougeon about 25 years ago by a
local apple grower. The orchard eventually fell out of use,
not being large enough on its own to be viable on a
traditional commercial scale, and too large for Lindy and
Rich (without growing experience) to deal with as a "home"
orchard. In 2005 Lindy and Rich's son Steve, his wife Jen
Williams and their sons Aidan and Elliot, bought Rich and
Lindy's house and put a second family addition on it,
putting three generations on the property.
Already growing a lot of
our own food, and interested in small scale sustainable
growing, we started into the world of growing "organic"
apples. Since then, with a lot of reading, seminars, apple
grower meetings, conversations with other growers, pruning,
thinning, bug identification, spraying, pruning and more
thinning, we are now starting to get good crops of apples
from the orchard once again, and are able to offer them for
sale.
At this point the future of the orchard looks good. We have
taken out many diseased and damaged trees. We have added,
and are adding, more new trees to balance out the types of
apples we will have during the season.
In 2009 we grafted cuttings from existing trees onto new
rootstock, and in 2010 we planted those new trees to fill
in gaps (from dead trees) in rows with the same variety. We
are also adding more new varieties (Wealthy, Esopus
Spitzenburg, Golden Russet, Williams Pride, Baldwin, Cox
Orange Pippin, Fameuse, Frostbite...).
At this point the orchard is too small to provide our
entire income, so we do have off-farm jobs as well. Steve
is a cabinetmaker specializing in cabinetry and furniture
under the guise of Apple Valley
Woodworking. Jen is an adjunct
faculty member at Greenfield Community College teaching
biology.
Please check out our How we grow
section.
Elliot, Jen, Aidan, and Steve.
