North Star Orchard • Farmer Profile

Press Page: Farmer Profile

(This article, written by Lisa, appeared on the cover of the fall 2006 issue of "Passages",

the newsletter for PASA (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture.)

I remember the day many years ago, that my husband, Ike, and I decided to pack up our excess of "Liberty" apples and take them to the produce auction. What a learning experience. We had to figure out how the auction worked, when to be there, how to get a vendor number, and where to purchase the right kind of boxes just to get started.

Armed with all of that information and a bundle of boxes, we spent the next several hours packing up the "Liberty,” sorting them by size into different boxes. The next day I was up before dawn, and set off to the auction with my 4-year-old son and a pickup truck full of apples. And our take for the effort? $2.50 per bushel box of apples. I was truly appalled.

What did we do next? We tried it again, and again, and again. Over the course of that harvest season, we sold at the auction several times, receiving anywhere from $1.25 to $3.50 per packed box. The average? You guessed it, about $2.50 per box of size-sorted high-quality fruit. So our net, taking out the cost of the box (82 cents each), was less than $2 per half bushel. It wasn’t even worth the trip to the auction for that, much less the time spent sorting, growing, and even planting the apples!

What did we do next? We cut down a bunch of "Liberty" trees! We also decided that we’d never let ourselves get in that kind of position again. Selling some portion of our fruit wholesale would just not be a sustainable option. In addition to the auction, a brief trial selling Asian pears to two local grocery stores was almost equally disastrous. Those wholesale markets just weren’t ready or willing to take what we had to offer.

A few years before, in 1992, we started planting the orchard and had committed ourselves to growing unique and heritage varieties of apples and Asian pears. It was obvious that if our farm was going to focus on unique varieties, we had to sell all of them retail. Not having a suitable location for on-farm sales, that meant relying solely on producer-only farmers’ markets. We already participated in two of such markets. Over the next several years we joined many more such markets as they came into existence.

What a joy it has been since then to grow this farm! Sure, cutting down a lot of "Liberty" trees was not easy. Nor was deciding to cut down the overabundance of Asian pear trees and other apple varieties which we had originally planted. But, with the need to really focus on esoteric varieties for the retail market, we’ve had the joy of selecting replacement varieties for those we cut down. Apples such as "Gold Rush,” "Esopus Spitzenberg,” "Pixie Crunch,” and "Reinette Simerenko" joined the lineup. Planting 33 varieties of peaches and 36 varieties of plums soon followed. Cherries and nectarines came along shortly thereafter.

With all this replanting on about 10 acres, we’ve experienced the joys of diversity, both of the varieties we grow and the people we’ve gotten to know. Focused solely on retail sales as we are, we’ve met so many wonderful people. Some have become employees, and some have become friends. All are invaluable. It’s always such a pleasure after a long, cold winter, to meet with my farmers’ market and CSA friends again each week!

I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to enjoy the variety that owning this orchard has had to offer: varieties of fruit, weather, work, and people. We can thank our early auction house experience. We wouldn’t be enjoying all these things today without it.

PASA: What do you see as some of the critical issues concerning agriculture today?

Lisa Kerschner: In our area, the critical issue is becoming the lack of access to farmland. Even if we farmers can come up with the means to pay for the land, by using the land wisely and marketing our products in the most profitable ways, the fact remains that there are fewer and fewer acres of appropriate farmland to be found. We’ve seen beautiful open fields, excellent for farm use, get re-sculpted and planted to houses. It’s horrifying. It’s scary to think that people are pushing their food supply away without a thought of the future. But those folks are not thinking about the safety, security, quality, and accessibility of their food. It is up to us, as individuals and as members of PASA, to try to combat this process. We all need to help people understand why it’s so important to keep farming local.

PASA: What is unique about your farm?

LISA KERSCHNER: By focusing on raising only unique and heritage varieties of fruit, we have created a niche market for ourselves. Growing high quality fruit of varieties that people cannot find elsewhere sets us apart. Another unique aspect of our farm is that we do not sell anything wholesale. With the high costs of land, labor, and supplies, we quickly determined that if we planned to stay in business, then we had to sell only at the retail level. For us, this means going to eight farmers’ markets a week and offering a fruit-only Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) option.

PASA: How has your operation evolved over the years?

LISA KERSCHNER: We started out without a real business plan, just with this idea to grow some unique fruit varieties. We just hoped the markets would “show up” when the time came to harvest the fruit! Having worked at New York City producer-only markets before, I understood the concept, and was hoping that similar markets would come along to this area. By some lucky chance, they did! As our trees grew, so did the producer-only market concept in this area. We were fortunate to be involved from the beginning with most of the markets we attend.

Branching into Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), called "North Star Fruit Explorers”, in 2004 came along naturally, as CSAs had become such a popular concept. We started it primarily as a means to share the small quantities of rare and unusual varieties that we grow with people who would really like to try them. While nearly all of our varieties are unique, there are many that we only have one or two trees. Since we have so few of them, the fruit does not go to many of the farmers' markets we attend. So, starting a CSA for folks who are interested in the more esoteric varieties we grow was very appealing.

Appealing also, of course, was the income we'd get from the CSA. As orchardists, our income stream doesn't really get going until August, so having some income in spring is very nice! Distribution so far is very local - at a few of our local farmers' market locations as well as at a farm nearby (Inverbrook Farm) which has a vegetable CSA. Our share season is twelve weeks, from mid-August until the first week of November.

We grow semi-dwarf trees using what Ike calls a “Certified Sensible” program. We select what we consider to be the most sensible approach to crop protection to protect our customers, the environment, and ourselves. In some cases that means using approaches that are traditionally considered organic methods (trapping insects, planting resistant varieties, and using organically-approved products), and sometimes that means using Integrated Pest Management (IPM) methods (monitoring pest populations, predator encouragement programs, and using synthetic chemicals where needed.)

PASA: Why did you join PASA?

LISA KERSCHNER: We believe in farming sustainably. For us, that means farming in as safe a manner as possible with respect to the environment, the future of the farm, and the people in contact with it, including the farmers, employees, neighbors, and customers. It means being able to earn not only a living wage, but be able to save for retirement, purchase our own property, afford health insurance, pay our employees more than minimum wage, and enjoy some quality of life. These are things that I imagine most any American aspires to do. We support PASA because PASA supports us in achieving these goals. We must each work individually as much as we can to effect changes in people’s knowledge about the sustainability and the future of agriculture, but it often takes a group effort to help make things happen.