Wet summer results in banner year for apples

The abundant amount of rain during June caused apple orchards throughout Michigan to thrive, yielding larger-than-average crops of apples that are not only numerous, but large. Kapnick’s Orchards, located on 4245 Rogers Hwy. in Britton, was no exception, reporting an excessive crop of apples for 2015. Scott Robertello, co-owner of Kapnick’s with Bruce and Sharon Schaffer, is thrilled about this year’s turnout. “It was a good apple crop for the state of Michigan,” Robertello said. “It’s estimated there were twenty-five million bushels in Michigan alone. I’m guessing we’ve produced around fifteen thousand bushels, which amounts to six-hundred-thousand pounds.” Kapnick Orchards will sell most of the apples, but will use some of them to make other products they sell at their store, located a short walk away from the orchard. “We sell the apples at our store, and we go to several farmer’s markets,” Robertello stated. “We make a lot of apple cider and caramel apples as well.”Forty percent of Kapnick’s apples go into their special apple cider. Kapnick Orchards spans over 90 acres, and has over twenty-five different varieties of apples. This year, some varieties have weighed in at over a pound for a single apple. “For us, the reasons that we had such a good crop this year was because there was very little frost. The largest contributor was rain,” Robertello said. “We had an excessive amount of rain this year, especially in June. Size of the apples was pretty phenomenal.”Some apples will not be sold right away. Rather, they will go into an airtight, controlled atmosphere storage unit, used to stop ripening of the apples. This unit will prolong the life of the fruit so customers may have fresh apples during the winter. After November, when all the apples are picked, Kapnick’s will begin pruning the trees until spring. Kapnick’s will then fertilize the trees and wait for the plants to bloom on Mother’s Day. During the spring and summer, the trees are thinned in order to take off stress from the growing plant. When the fruit is ready to be harvested, each apple is picked by hand, not machine. While Kapnick’s is not organic, they spray as sparingly as possible to ensure the quality of their product, using a scientific formula to predict when bugs will become a problem for each fruit.“There’s a science to everything, and a lot of science growing apples. The process is fairly complicated,” Robertello said. “It takes years to plan out the trees, and four to five years to have your first decent crop. It’s a continuous process of planning out what you customers want. We are thinking about what people will want in 10 to 15 years when our trees are in full production.” Besides apples, Kapnick Orchards also produces cherries, blueberries, pumpkins, and peaches. Their store also offers a large assortment of baked goods, jams, jellies, honey, syrups, vegetables, and other homemade goods, as well as a schedule for those customers desiring to pick their own apples, available on their website, www.kapnickorchards.com.Robertello acknowledges that running an orchard is no easy task, but takes joy in the day-to-day operations that, at harvest time, become a rewarding endeavor. “It’s all good. I like how we grow such a variety, and how we interact with the customers,” Robertello stated. “I like talking to people, and there’s always something new coming in.”