NOVEMBER 2013 | Section A
Planting apple trees has been a long-standing tradition for Sarah Brown’s family By Ryan Trares
B Sarah Brown Republic file photos
ins full of multicolored apples fill the barn at The Apple Works orchard as customers peruse this year’s fruit harvest. Bright red Gala apples, sweet and juicy, are piled near the Daybreak Fujis, with their muted orange hues. Tart and tangy Cortlands, complex green-yellow Mutsus and Golden Delicious varieties have crowds packed around them. The fruit has been harvested over the previous two months, as employees readied themselves for the rush of autumn. After almost a year of preparation, the make-or-break time of year is finally upon them. “We work all year for September and October,” explains Sarah Brown, owner of The Apple Works. “Those are the biggest months for us.”
The Brown family founded its apple orchard near Trafalgar in 1989. What started out as a business with a few hundred trees has now grown into a thriving agritourism operation with more than 7,000 trees that draws thousands of people to the area each fall. The hilly terrain around Trafalgar, and further south into Brown County, has a long history of apple production. Orchard owners William Walden and Benjamin Douglas were prominent citizens in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their fruit and preserves were once shipped all over the country. Success in the apple business was partially due to the location of the orchards. The hills in this part of Indiana protect against spring frosts and extreme heat, making for crisp, richly flavored apples, Brown explains. The orchard now has been open for 24 years. But growing fruit is a tradition that stretches back even further for Brown. Her grandmother’s family owned large commercial orchards in northern Ohio in the early 20th century. As a child, her own family planted fruit trees, but never a full orchard. “We’d visit orchards, and we’d always have fresh fruit from our own planting,” she recalls. “It was something that I always loved and was brought up with. When I started this, I always felt like I was finishing someone else’s job.”
The Early Years Sarah and her husband, Rick Brown, initially began planting trees on the southern portion of their property by hand, using a shovel to remove the dirt and placing saplings in their holes. Those early years revealed a simple operation. The family would pick the apples and tend to the trees, putting the harvested fruit in a pair of refrigerators set up in the middle of a field. The Browns’ daughters, Maggie and Allison, were stationed at a picnic table by the road, advertising apples for sale. When a car stopped, they’d run to the refrigerator to fill the order.
See apples on a2