I own a small Apple Orchard in SE Idaho of about 180 trees. A little over half of the trees are Honeycrisp and the remainder are equal parts Red Haralson, Sweet Sixteen, Cortland, and Honeygold. All of the trees are 15 years or younger and yielded somewhere in the range of 8000-10,000 lbs of apples last harvest. These apples are sold to local customers who stop by our property. We also press our own raw cider using a blend of all the apples mentioned that has become very popular in our area.

In addition to the commercial side of the property, we have an assortment of other fruit trees, berries, and nuts that have suffered a couple of years of neglect at the hands of the previous owner. There is one peach tree of unknown variety that produced very well last year. There’s a pie cherry tree that also did well. There’s a couple of overgrown ancient apple trees of unknown variety that didn’t grow any fruit last year. Hopefully some attention can bring back an old variety to add to our collection. There’s a couple of plum tress that also need attention as well as two apricot and a pear tree. We have a copious amounts of of blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry bushes. We are dabbling in grapes without very much success and we planted a single blueberry bush to see if we could get it to thrive despite our inherently alkaline soil.

Overall, we’re extremely happy with the property and the potential it has. I work full time in nuclear energy research and development and my wife stays home with our 5 year old daughter.