Our personal experience as Apple Farmers (a.k.a. Apple Orchardists) began when the 5 CROSS B FAMILY GROUP moved to North Central Washington State after many years’ residence in various locations in South Central Alaska, to take up the life of Full Time Orchardists. In the summer of 1976 we were able to purchase a 20-acre orchard. This acreage consisted of approximately 14 acres of apples, comprised of 40% Golden Delicious and the remainder 60% in three varieties of Red Delicious - Stark Bisbee-a blush, Chelan Red-another blush, and Red Kings-a stripe variety. The remaining slightly less than 5 acres of fruit were planted in sweet cherries, about half Bings and the other half Vans. Our Original Home, orchard roads, open space, and Right of Way Easements covered the remaining acreage. Since then the actual fruit producing acreage, which currently stands at just under 17 producing acres, was reduced over the years by the addition of a Barn Complex and a second home site for our New Home.
     After some five years of orchard operation, we thought it was probably time to start the renewal process, to change over some of the poorer coloring red apple varieties to better ones. We began our first effort to rotate to a better coloring Red Striped apple by replacing the existing Red King variety, an old style low color stripe, located on the East Side of the Original Home Block. We took out every other tree in four rows, and replanted with the Red Chief. Halfway through the replacement of every other Red King, we tried a second stripe, the Anderson Red, which we liked better. However, during the mid-1980’s, some two years after making these initial changes, the Royal Gala apple became The New Variety to grow. Instead of continuing the replacement of the remaining Red Kings with another red apple, we took out what remained of this variety and replanted with Royal Galas in their space. In that same year we grafted over the Red Chief we had planted earlier, to the Royal Gala as well. That gave us about 1.3 acres of this new variety. About 5 years later we replaced another section of red rows on the West Side of the same block, with an additional planting of Royal Galas. This gave us another seven rows of the Gala apple and brought the acreage for this variety up to just over 2 acres. Except for the replacement with some Galas of trees in an experimental row over by our Original Home, we have not replanted any more rows to the Gala variety. There are huge areas being planted in the Columbia Basin growing region of Central Washington State, leading to a glut of this variety and a steady decrease in the returns over the past 10 years.
     In 1984, after yet another year of disastrous prices for our cherry crop, we decided it was time for a major change in this half block. After careful consideration of the pros and cons, we elected to covert this area to apples and settled on the Law Spur Rome as our choice of replacement fruit tree. At that time, the Gala was just too new in the market place for us to consider risking replanting this larger area with this new variety. The better coloring Rome variety we selected had been doing very well in the Market Place for sometime, making it a better choice for us. In the spring of 1985 we replanted some 2.5 acres. Over the next two years we replaced the remaining cherry tress with the Law Spur Rome.
     Over a 4 year period in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s we took a brave step, electing to replaced the now poor coloring trees in Red Chelan acreage, some 2 ½ acres, with the new Blushing Golden, a variety that we felt was a "sleeper". Some six years into the conversion to this new variety, we discovered some real problems with growing quality Blushing Goldens. In 1996 we grafted or replaced these young trees, the entire 2.5-acre section, with the Washington Spur, a proven full coloring striped apple.
     Some two years earlier, in 1994 we had started a replant program with this same Washington Spur, to replace the aging Stark Bisbees which had been originally planted in the mid 1960’s. Over the previous ten years we had reduced the number of original Bisbees, by taking out every other tree, to give them more room to grow into, as well as let in more light, but in time this strategy ceased to work for maintaining color levels. By taking out every other row of existing Bisbees and replanting to the Washington Spur, we felt we had given the remaining rows of Bisbees a few more years in which to produce satisfactorily colored fruit. Finally in 1999 we replaced that last of the Bisbees, this time with a new blush variety, the Morgan Spur.
     After our disastrous experiment with a "new variety", the Blushing Golden, we again grew cautious. When everyone was planting huge holdings of the new Fuji and Braeburn Apples, we planted only a row, or a few trees in some cases, to first assess the growing characteristics of these and other new varieties. With each variety we found problems not easily overcome in our operation, and therefore elected not to plant large areas with any of these. We later grafted over or replaced the few experimental trees we had of these New Varieties with the stable Washington Spur or the Gala. As with all Red Varieties (as well as the Gala and the Fuji for that matter) a newer, better coloring off shoot is constantly being found and propagated. Upgrades to existing or completely new varieties are coming so fast in the apple industry, that by the time you have your "New Variety" up and producing, it is already obsolete!! The Washington Spur is now being replaced by a redder sport, the Red Zenith, which we have used to replace any Red Stripe trees that have died. These two are enough alike in color as to work together well at harvest time.
     The only variety that never seemed to really change for us is the Golden Delicious. The existing trees in this Orchard, which were planted in the mid-1960’s, are starting to show their age. Like all the original trees planted on this place, these are on a semi-dwarfing rootstock. Though old by some standards, they continue to crank out large quantities of good fruit. We average some 100 plus bins per acre with this variety, and had for many years. Age, along with its disease problems, would have force the beginning of a replacement program on this variety in the near future. But before this happened, we would have seen that the newer Red varieties now coming into full production that would make up for the potential loss of quantity produced by these Golden Delicious.
     Over the years this Orchard sustained a 1000 bin or better production average to maintain a satisfactory income, which it did for many years. However, with the strong economic downturn in the Apple Industry over the years in the latter part of the 1990's even this amount of fruit did not covered the annual cost of production. Generally one had to make from $90 to $100 per bin on the fruit in order to break even. During our last 5 years in orcharding, the returns had been far less than this for all Red and Golden Delicious Varieties, which constituted 2/3rds or more of our holdings. Our Romes and Galas, as well as the Fuji and other more exotic varieties grown by others, faired better, but generally paid much lower than "normal" returns as well, often below the much higher growing costs. Many factors lead to this downturn – over production World Wide, Economic Woes in certain markets, encroachment in our domestic markets by foreign fruit, and weather related problems such as hail and sunburn. Because of these difficult to overcome circumstances, with no real end in sight, many orchardists in our State were facing the loss of their orchards through foreclosure and/or bankruptcy proceedings. We unfortunately became part of this group. After successfully farming this orchard for the better part of 24 years, we saw the loss of our livelihood …..

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