Basically explore all the different venues and try to work realistic assumptions as to the amount of effort they require. Talking with fellow farmers doing what you want to try should take you a long way forward.
Basically speaking; with enough efficiencies built in it is possible for a one man operation to gross $50k a year. Jumping that to $100 a year would require additional labor which can be seasonal. With that comes all the complications of managing people and diminishing margins as your costs go up and your markups remain the same.
Certainly. But assuming that the taste is automatically better in an heirloom is a mistake.
Besides, what constitutes an âheirloomâ these days? Most people would consider the âHaralsonâ (released in the 1920s, U.Minn) that Iâm looking at right now an âheirloomâ. So is the âSweet Sixteenâ also from U.Minn. but a much more recent introduction, chopped liver?
Whew.
Lots of sage advice going around in this thread.
G.890 isnât a rootstock with which I have experience.
It sounds like youâve your homework. What planting densities is G.890 commonly used in?
Which varieties work well on this rootstock?
(Honeycrisp is notoriously difficult to work with because I hear of nothing but bitter on anything else other than Bud-9)
Are you thinking of making tall spindle trees? Standard trees?
So for fresh sales red apples (or yellow or whatever color other than green itâs supposed to be) fetch the most moneyâŚof course I donât your local market but at every growerâs convention I go to I keep hearing a chant echoingâŚredâŚredâŚredâŚredâŚred
Thereâs a handful of varieties that donât seem to color red very well that people fawn overâŚin my area Northern Spy comes to mindâŚand itâs not a club apple unlike Snapdragon⌠which people also fawn over but the # of growers is limited because thatâs how business worksâŚggggrrrrâŚcurses
Thereâs also summer apples that have cult followingsâŚGinger Gold comes to mind (my baby cousin insists on Ginger GoldâŚif only children werenât so darn cute and innocent)
Usually an " heirloom" apple is one that is pre 1930, or so. Probably one that was not designed/originating in a lab but grown from seeds. Just a rough definition.
thats what i would do, personally. Ive done it both ways, and still do, depending. Theres a lot to be said for grafting onto established trees. Do the high value stuff- grafting, training, etc.- after the rough and ready stuff - digging, root pruning, planting - if you can, IMO
Taste has nothing to do with it. Heck we all have different âtastesâ so what may be my favorite you may consider chopped liver.
There is no agreed definition of heirloom but if you ask me it has to do with cultural and or historical significance. They could also be highly localized in both geographical and social terms. Lastly I would peg them before WWII, before the emergence of modern agriculture, hybrids, and parents. Often heirlooms hold a generic biodiversity that is being lost in the ultra refinement for specific traits, and in some cases they can even be at risk of extinction.
Based on records, among apples George Washington grew at Mount Vermont were New Town Pippin, Gloucester White, Maryland Red Strick, and Nonpareil. The ones that are still known to us are nearly impossible to find, the others presumed gone are still being hunted down in farms and old houses hoping that they can be brought back.
There is a lot of discussion about starting up a new farm business. Especially pay attention to comments by @blueberrythrill and @Olpea. Both of them grow apples commercially and also grow peaches and cane fruits.
One thing I might add about starting a small apple orchard is that I would avoid summer apple varieties. We planted some summer apples years ago. Although we do sell them, I doubt we could sell them all, if we had lots of summer apple trees.
People naturally want to pick apples in the fall, so fall planted apples sell the best. Fall apples also go really well with pumpkins. Pumpkins are pretty easy to grow. They do require some fungicide (mainly powdery mildew) and insecticide sprays, but really donât require much special equipment other than spray equipment.
We donât plant a lot of pumpkins (just finished planting about 700 pumpkins seeds a couple days ago) so we donât require specialized equipment. For folks planting acres of pumpkins, they just use a John Deere 7000 four or six row planter, using modified corn meters. Pumpkins sell easily and most people will buy lots of them, if there are lots of colors and shapes. If you have upick apples to go with it, itâs a really nice match.
I would be very careful not to quit your day job to run the orchard full time, unless you have many years of back to back successes, if you are planning to use the income to support your family. Instead, I would recommend running the orchard like a part time operation, with some hired help.
Crops fail all the time. Pumpkins fail, sometimes drastically from downy mildew, or drought (if you donât irrigate them). Apples can fail too from spring frosts. Just make sure you know how you and your family are going to survive, if you have a couple back to back years of losses.
5 acres is very risky to try to make a family living off of. I personally wouldnât try it. We have 18 acres, and itâs really too small to take good advantage of economies of scale.
We have grown and direct marketed Blueberries and Blackberries for a long time and Peaches and Apples for about 15 years in zone 7B on a small scale of around 7 acres. My climate is very different so I canât offer any specific crop recommendations, just general advice based on a lot of trial and error with a just a few big successes.
You can generate a moderate net income from 5 acres but you need the right crops and the right marketing. I would start with a basic market analysis of what other growers in your area produce, how much they grow, what they sell it for and where they sell it. You will need crops that have the potential to gross $30K or perhaps more per acre to succeed. Plan on a 8-10 years to breakeven. After breakeven the actual cost of production can be low if you provide all the labor which can produce good net margins. We have found that its not too tough to sell an acre or two of a given crop for a good price, but as production increases it takes lower prices to sell everything.
It takes thousands of transactions to sell just a few acres of fruit. With a revenue target of $150K (which may not be possible) and an average sale of $50, 3000 transactions would be required. It takes a lot of parking and a lot of selling time to handle 3000 transactions. How many customers you can attract has a lot to do with the population of the county where you live and population of surrounding counties. 500K folks in my county which helps.
Lots of crop budgets are available on the internet but most are not current. I would plan on about half of the revenue estimated by multiplying expected yield by expected price. Most budgets are based on 100 acres so it takes some effort to predict expected costs. 30,000 pounds of Apples per acre X $2/LB = $60K/acre. Looks great in spreadsheet but very tough in the orchard!
Labor is critical and we have found that 5 or 6 acres is about the right size if you donât plan on hiring labor.
Really like the idea of starting small and expanding as your experience and customer base grows.
Selling scion wood or trees mail order may work too. A local grower here has developed a huge business selling heritage Apple trees. He teaches high school full time and manages the orchard too
Growing and selling fruit or trees is a great retirement project but a risky choice for a person with a valuable skill set during their productive years.
Goodluck. Please let us know how things are going.
In the beginning selling trees may be a good place to start. You get a âcropâ in two years and a revenue stream. There is a start up nursery in Illinois I took a chance on and bought apples from the first year they had trees. They supplied me with real nice âfeatheredâ trees which are perfect for tall spindle planting. In addition to trees, they now sell apples and pumpkins as well as other stuff. I think their business model might be worth copying.
As a consumer I have to say I donât see any shortages of apples⌠they are available everywhere. Trees are a different story. At the retail level since Covid trees sell out early, or are not available at all. Prices have also risen which is a good thing for tree growers. At a small scale, I think a tree nursery looks viable especially if you are selling trees by mail order nationally.
Here are some links for the Illinois tree nursery-
their website-
facebook page
google maps picture of the actual nursery and orchard
mroot brings up a good point/idea. I have found that nurseries that focus on wildlife plantings are always sold out. Perhaps you might consider supplying to said retailers. Your planting density could be much higher then
Yeah, thats an intriguing idea. I dont have a commercial endeavor of any kind going here- I just canât justify it financially when my day job pays well and my business is growing continuously. Besides, I decided for the time being that I need the enjoyment of growing too much to give it up for $ and more âwork.â
That said, the model I have pursued all along is one of mixed production of fruit (and other diverse crops) coupled with production of nursery stock. Especially with stool beds and other high density/low intensity methods, you can generate a lot of stock with not too much effort and some time invested laying the groundwork. Apples are always in demand, but also wodely available. Weirdo heirlooms could be a niche, but how many people will know enough to distinguish between them? Ditto some of the oddball stuff Iâm growing. My thought was to have enough of a given fruit flr people to try them and hopefully like them, then show them that I had that very variety for sale in my nursery area.
Despite giving up on such ambitions, I still grow a bunch of nursery stock anyway. I just plant most of it here and give the rest away.