The Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard

Today I'm talking with Emily at The Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard.

 

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Emily  at the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard  in Virginia. Good morning, Emily. How are you? Good morning. I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on today. Thank you for making the time. I know that you guys are all very, very busy people.  How is the weather there today?

00:28
It is sunny. It's beautiful.  The past week or so we've had a thunderstorm every day.  So, um, I don't know what's coming up later, but right now it's just beautiful. Yeah, I'm in Minnesota and it is very sunny. There's a light breeze, but it's also like 80 degrees with heavy humidity. So  I'm to be spending the day working on my podcast inside. Cause that seems like a good idea. Nice.  Yep.

00:57
have laptop, we'll get work done. That's good.  So tell me about yourself and what you do.  So  I am an owner of the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard.  We opened in 2016.  I am a farmer,  a baker.  I do all the stuff behind the scenes. I manage our social media.  I plan our events. kind of the

01:28
everything at the farm,  which is a lot, but  yeah, it's great.  we

01:40
The farm has been in our family since right  after the Civil War.  My great-great-grandfather James Swate opened an apple and peach packing plant there.  And then my grandfather  carried on the tradition and has been farming there  since the 60s, I believe.  So the property has been in our family for a really long time.

02:08
Kind of why we got our name the Homestead Farm, because it's on our family's homestead. And then the Fruit Hill Orchard part comes from my grandfather's orchard business, which is Fruit Hill Orchard. nice. So do you have old photos from from generations past? Yes, we do. We so my grandfather, his grandmother grew up there.

02:36
And we have pictures of her out back with  the old windmill, which funny story, she  accidentally  rolled her car into the windmill and knocked it over in the  80s, I think.  And  we  have since put a new windmill up in her honor. But  yeah, we have old photos of the family. The building next door that was the Apple and Peach packing plant, that used to be a barn,  but now it is a

03:06
warehouse type building,  but we have pictures of that before they enclosed the barn area and change that around.  Yeah, old pictures of the house. Our farm market was actually the carriage barn  where my grandmother stored her car and my great grandmother,  um, stored her car. So  yeah, lots of interesting history there for sure. And pictures.  I love it.  Um,

03:35
the reason I asked is our house is over a hundred years old  and We've only been living here for almost five years and I keep trying to find someone who knows anything about the property because it's been here a long time  and Nobody lives around here that knows anything about it from a hundred years ago So I'm out of luck on the history Yeah, you'll have to do some diggings.  Yeah, there's a  Historical Society in the town up from us

04:05
So they might have something I got to get up there this summer and  ask and be like, so what do you know about this address in  LaSore, Minnesota? Cause I need history. need it. I need it right now.  So I'm sure there's a ton of it too. So hopefully you can find it. I hope so. Cause I'm so curious. I've been told that there was a real barn here and it got torn down or a storm took it out years ago.

04:32
And now we have this big ugly maroon and cream colored pole barn. And every time I look at the pole barn, I'm like, I wish the old barn was still here because that would have given this place so much more character. Yeah. Oh, but it's long gone. you know, what are you going to do? Okay. So what do you guys do at the farm? You have an art, you have an orchard.

04:57
We have an orchard that has been there for many, many years.  That is part of Fruit Hill Orchards original orchard. That's apples and peaches. And then we also grow our garden produce there.  We do tomatoes, beans, peppers, squash, cornmelons, blackberries, and that is all chemical free. We don't use any  chemicals on our gardens or our berries at all.

05:27
We also source local and organic produce whenever we don't have something or ours isn't ready yet. Because chemical free and organic is super important to me. And then same with the bakery.  We source local fruits,  local eggs, as many organic  ingredients as possible.  And those are all,  all of our baked goods are all homemade.

05:56
From scratch in our bakery, we also raise cattle. I have chicken, so we have some of our own meat and eggs for sale. We also have a sugar shack, which has hand dipped and soft serve ice cream and all kinds of toppings and specials and things like that. Trying to think. We also have some events.

06:26
Every  year our big Sunflower Festival is coming up on September 6th this year,  which is huge for us. Our little place gets thousands of attendees that day.  And then we have a Farm and Makers Market that comes up on  the last Saturday of every month.  So  we love to support other locals,  people that are maybe homesteading or doing something that they don't have.

06:54
a farm stand or a place to sell, love to try to help them out and get some of their products in our store.  We also, a big one for us is Bluegrass on Thursday nights. We have a back porch jam,  live music. It's just a bunch of local musicians that come out  and play and we serve a dinner that night  and it's a lot of fun. So we are really busy. We've got a lot going on at the farm.

07:23
all the time.  Wow. Yeah, that's a lot.  Okay.  So I have two questions. The sugar shack that's on your property. Okay. Yes. It is right beside our farm market. We  built it. We kind of connected the sugar shack that's there now to  the cooler we had  already existing.

07:51
So it's just a small little building right beside our farm market. That's awesome. I love that. I bet it's adorable.  And then you don't have to tell me specifics, but do you have a lot of land for your farm? So the farm that we have at the market here, that the land is split up between my mom and her sister.

08:17
And it is in total, it's 300 acres, but we are only farming about 10 of that ourselves  that's not orchard. And most of our fields are like sunflower. We do the Sunflower Festival. So we have a two acre sunflower field  and then we do a big pumpkin patch  and  then our produce is on the rest.

08:45
Okay, so what do you do with the sunflowers? So we grow them,  let people come out and pick them, we sell them  per stem, but we  just let people come out and enjoy them. Mainly we don't charge entry. The  only time we do charge entry is to our sunflower festival,  but otherwise if our markets open,

09:12
People are welcome to go out and enjoy the flowers, take photos. We had one lady,  her family spread her ashes out there because she loved sunflowers. So we had memorial services out there.  But yeah, the sunflowers are a huge draw. We're kind of known in Winchester as the sunflower farm.  That is so cool. Yeah.

09:37
We grow sunflowers here, but we only grow like a row of them because we think that they're pretty. And they grow so easily. if anyone has a patch they just want to happiness in, throw in some sunflower seeds.

09:55
Yes, exactly.  We don't have a way to really to water ours once the seeds are in. So we kind of just depend on  God and the weather to take care of it for us.  So yeah, they are really easy. We throw our seeds out and every year we have a pretty good crop.

10:17
Do you grow different colored ones or are they just all that really kind of orange yellow?  All of the ones in the big field are that orange yellow. We grow some specialty ones in rows like we do the  ones with the white petals or we do like the black center with the orange petals or the red ones.  So we do grow a variety but they're not the variety of those colors are not in the big field.

10:45
Yeah, we grow some cream colored ones that are absolutely gorgeous.  love them. Those are my favorite too. They're so pretty.

10:55
Yeah, and if you put them with  the reddish brownish ones,  they remind me of autumn. If you put the cream ones with  the reddish brownish ones, they're really pretty together in a vase.  Oh, yeah. Yeah, and we grow those too.  My son actually started it because he was like, can we grow sunflowers? Not we have room. And I was like, yes. And he had us order like a variety pack of sunflower seeds. So they were all different colors.

11:24
He said, so what colors will come up? And I was like, I don't know.  It's a waiting game. It'll be like Christmas when they bloom.  we had so many different colors. He was like, I love this. Can we do this every year? said, yes, yes, we can. Did you guys save your seeds from the sunflowers?  Some of them, yes. Yeah.  We tend to leave ours for the birds.  We buy a new seed every year just because it's so much that we need.

11:53
But yeah, it's amazing to see like all the birds and wildlife out there enjoying the sunflowers once they've dried up and died. So it's a win-win to enjoy them and then also  be doing that.

12:10
Yes, here in Minnesota, because we get snow in November, December, January, February, and March, for sure. We leave a lot of the heads on the plants so that the birds can have seed and that way we're not buying bird seed from the store. Yeah, that's great. They seem to appreciate it. Yeah, they do. So, okay. So, so is the, is the farm or the homestead or whatever, um, supporting itself or do you have an outside job?

12:42
So, nope, that is my job. It is supporting itself. I have been, so I have two kids and I have been working, well, we opened the farm in 2016 and we're seasonal. So I don't technically have a job in the winter time when we're closed. We have a couple months of downtime and I bake cakes during that time for some extra income.

13:12
So, yeah.  Congratulations on doing something you love and making it go. Thank you.  I do. This was a dream of mine. And I'm so happy that it's working out. We're on our ninth season, so that's pretty huge.  Every year gets a little better and better.  I've started sourcing a lot more  products for the market that are

13:40
super healthy, like real food, nutrient dense food, clean ingredients, free of seed oils, all that kind of stuff. I've been on my own health journey since I had my daughter in 2020. So it inspired me to just clean up my life and also offer these kind of products in our store. And it's really working out well. So I'm super happy about that. Okay, so

14:11
I hate to use the word competition because I feel like farmers and homesteaders aren't really in competition.  Are there people who are doing kind of the same thing as you are anywhere near you? Let's not call it competition. There are a lot of farms,  small homesteads in Frederick County,  farm markets.  There's a lot of them here.  And there's one that's like two miles down the road from us.

14:37
but they don't grow their own stuff. It's very different.  I don't like the word competition. I don't feel like we're in competition  with them because we're so different, if that makes sense. And what we offer is very different.  But as far as like the other farms that would be doing stuff that's similar to us,  we  all support each other and I love it. It's just this community of

15:05
people who  we really do work together. mean, I bake some baked goods for another farm that's down the road and I get some meat from them for what we don't have. And it's like that just with a lot of the other farms. I get eggs from another farm and we're all just kind of in this together. know,  people are waking up, they're wanting local food, they're wanting to know their farmer and

15:34
I think that it's more important now than ever.  And  so there's room for all of us  to succeed. Yes. And I'm going to say this for probably at least a hundred time during the tenure of my podcast.  All are a rising tide raises all ships. And that's what you're doing.  And you're right.  Now is the time. It wasn't the time before.  Now is the time for  all these small communities.

16:04
to get to know each other and work together and produce food and produce products because  things could get real, real chaotic here in the next six months, especially this winter. So if you grow anything, produce anything, make anything,  get to know the other people who are doing it too and start like a little community so that your bigger community has a place to go for things. Yes. Yes, I love that.

16:33
do feel like that's what we're doing here  in Frederick County, that's for sure.  There is a group, one of my friends started, it's called Frederick County Homesteaders,  and she creates a shop local guide, and there's a farm crawl twice a year where  people buy a ticket and they go around and visit all the participating farms.  And  that's something that I think that a lot of counties and communities

17:02
should start. think she's going to offer a course on how to start up  a local chapter, I guess, for people who really don't know where to start but want to start something like that in their community.  But it has brought me together with  so many  of these small farms  and connected us all. And it's really cool to be a part of that and to have that here in our community.

17:31
Awesome.  The other thing that I wanted to work into the podcast today and now is a good time to do it  is over the next six to eight months,  if you have relatives that are having a hard time now,  make sure you keep tabs on them and you  check in and see where you can help because  my parents live in Maine. I live in Minnesota. I'm really lucky that my sister  lives a couple of miles down the road from my parents.

18:01
Because right now, if she wasn't there, I would be very concerned about my parents. They are elderly people. So make sure you check in with your neighbors and  not just your friends, but your neighbors and make sure they're doing okay. Yeah,  that's very important.

18:22
We've all got to look out for each other.

18:27
Yes, and if you're growing a garden and you know your neighbor likes tomatoes and you have a bunch that you're not going to use, offer them up.

18:36
Yes, I love that. And it doesn't even have to be tomatoes. could be peas. It could be lettuce. It could be cucumbers. It could be squash, whatever. But just if you have a lot, give it  to people who need it.

18:50
Yeah. I'm a little worried about the world. Can you tell? Hey, I'm there with you, but I think that it's going to be okay. We all are working together and I do think the majority of people are looking out for one another. I really hope it's true. I really want that to be true.

19:20
Okay, so  what do people tell you when they come to visit your place? What's the, I don't know, general consensus on their experience with your place?  I get a lot of positive feedback, which makes me so happy because we work really hard and to hear those kind of things makes all that hard work super worth it.  I get a lot of people that thank us for

19:46
growing our produce the way that we do without chemicals  and for carrying some certified organic produce.  And  we are also a raw milk pickup location  for another farm in West Virginia that is able to sell pet milk. And so people thank us for being an outlet for that.  And I've been posting a lot on our social media stories.

20:16
And it's brought a lot of new customers in and I hear often that people love my videos and  I'm blown away by all the love and support that we are receiving. So yeah, it's, all good stuff. It makes it so worth it when people  tell you stuff that's positive because then you have the gas in your tank to keep going, to keep working, even though sometimes you have a bad day.  Yeah.

20:46
once had a lady tell me she comes every year and she said she traveled 2000 miles for the best peach pie she's ever had in her life and that the trip is totally worth it and I just couldn't believe that someone would want to travel that far for one of our peach pies.

21:10
So that was really,  really flattering.  That's a hell of a commute, but if it's for the best peach pie ever, it's worth it.  Yeah, I don't know if she was coming to the area already, but she comes through Virginia once a year  and  stops for the peach pies. So that's really awesome. That's high praise, Emily. Take it when you can get it.

21:37
Um, so you said you have peach trees. Do you have a lot of peach trees? We do. I don't know exactly how many, um, but we grow freestone yellow peaches. grow freestone white. And if you don't know, freestone means that they fall off the pit easily. Um, and they, probably peel easier too, if they're a freestone. We also grow some semi-freestones. Um, and then we grow some clings.

22:08
The clings are a yellow peach and they cling to the pit so they don't fall off easily.  But a lot of people want the free stone and I just have to say the cling peaches are the best for canning if you want to can like peach slices  or  freeze them because unlike some of the other peaches, these cling peaches hold their shape and they hold up  and

22:37
have like such a good flavor  whenever you open that can of  canned peaches and or frozen peaches.  And so  I always try to tell people that they should try the clings even though they're not as easy to  cut. They are totally worth all the work when you're processing them.  And yeah, so we have a variety of different kinds.

23:06
on the farm,  but the most popular would be the yellow freestone peaches, which are what we're picking right now.  I am so jealous. We don't really have a lot of peach growers in Minnesota. We grew peaches last year. Our trees did not bloom this year for some reason.  So we have two peach trees here that are cold hardy. And we did get peaches last fall off of those trees and they were so good and we're not going to have any this year. I am so sad.

23:36
We did lose a lot to frost this year. We had an early spring frost  and the peaches that we do have  are  really great. Like the size of them is even  bigger because there weren't as many on the trees.  But yeah, it just depends on the weather again with  the crop. Thankfully we have some though. We're super thankful for what we do have.

24:04
Yes, I'm sure you are because man, it is just such a bummer when you think you're going to have trees loaded and there's not a single one.  Do you can? Do you can peaches yourself? do. Yes.  That's one of my favorite things to can. Okay. I have a question because we want it. We were talking about canning our own peaches this year.  We don't have any can, but if we had, we would have.  And we bought a whole bunch of peaches a couple of years ago from

24:32
the My Fruit Truck company and they were lovely peaches and we canned them and they turned brown. They're fine, they're edible, but they're brown. Do you know how to keep the peaches from turning brown when they're canned? Did you just can them in water or did you do a simple syrup? I don't remember. Is the simple syrup the trick?

24:58
That would be yeah, the sugar in the syrup would keep them from turning brown.  And then some in some cases you can add a little like splash of lemon juice or so, but  I don't ever do that. I just do I make the light syrup. I use the recipe in the ball canning  complete canning book. It's you know, the little one you can get at almost any store that sells the canning supplies.  There's a recipe in there for light syrup  and

25:28
Yep, that's the one that I use. And I don't like a ton of sugar.  I personally don't even eat  refined sugar at all.  So last year I experimented making a honey syrup  and that actually worked out really well.  And the peaches didn't turn brown, but I do think that they have a  better flavor when they're canned in that light syrup versus the honey.  in the water.

25:55
If it was just canned in water only, that would be  why they would turn brown. think.  Yeah. I do not remember. It was like three summers ago and I have slept many nights since then.  Yeah.  But thank you because I've been trying to figure it out and I have that, that canning book you're talking about. So will look for that recipe.  And if you, if anybody wants to go into canning,  the ball books, any of them, anything that was produced by ball company is good. They're a good book.

26:26
Yeah, I look in there for almost everything. I do my green beans,  the recipe out of there for green beans. I do  pickles out of there.  I've done jam and jelly. So a lot of things I turn to the ball book for.  Yep, absolutely. It's like the Bible of canning.  So  you said you have a bakery.  Do you mean literally a bakery? you, you, um,

26:53
licensed to sell commercially or are you talking like a home a home-based bakery? So we are inspected by the Virginia Department of Agriculture. So our kitchen is certified. We had to do that for our business to be able to sell meals on our bluegrass nights. So we typically have to take a serve safe course every five years.

27:19
to maintain  certification to serve food. And then we have a yearly inspection in our kitchen.  It's a full kitchen. So we do our baking there, but we also do food prep there as well.

27:37
Okay. Awesome. And you just proved my statement that I talk about all the time on the podcast, that every state has different rules and regulations  for cooking and selling what you cook. Because in Minnesota,  we have the cottage food producer registration, which makes it so you can  make baked goods and things in your kitchen and sell them as long as you are present.

28:02
And then we have the commercial licensing that you can get where you have to take the big class, you have to pay for the class, you have to get  the piece of paper that says, yes, you took the classes, yes, you have the license to sell anywhere and you can ship your goods anywhere. Yeah. And we have that in Virginia too, the cottage food law. A lot of the small homesteads around are operating off of that because they can sell their baked goods  to the consumer.

28:31
without a license. But for us, we, I mean, we could have done the same thing, but we were expanding into serving meals. And that's a whole nother  ball game with,  you know, the licensing and stuff. Plus  having the certified kitchen, it does give us the option to wholesale. And I do wholesale some baked goods elsewhere. So that is,  that gives us the ability to do that.

29:01
But yeah, I think every state does do things a little bit differently.

29:07
They sure do.  I have talked to a lot of people over the last 22 months and yes,  every state is different in some way and it's what makes it work. So I'm okay with that.  I should have asked you at the beginning. Did you start out small with all of this or did you just jump in with both feet and hope that you could swim?  Well, we did start out small. Every year we've gotten a little bit bigger and we're still pretty small.

29:36
But  our first year,  we didn't hire anybody. Well, we hired one person to help in the gardens three days a week, but it was just my mom and I,  and we didn't have any fancy equipment.  The orchards had a tractor and my aunt had a disc.  And so  we would borrow that and disc our field because we didn't even have like a tiller or anything.

30:03
And we would disc our field and then we would use a wheel plow, like a push behind, like you push it and it digs the ditch.  And so we would do that. We would hand weed, put straw down. And then about our fifth season in,  after, mean, we would hand water everything and it would take like two hours each day on the hottest days. So  we, um, eventually were like, you know,

30:31
we need to buy some equipment to help us. So we purchased a tiller,  we got a  plastic mulch layer so we could do the rows with the plastics that we didn't have to  weed as much.  And then we got a water wheel planter that we could ride on and pop the plants in the ground with it.  And so that was a game changer for our gardens.  It's a huge deal for us.

30:59
to have that and then,  we still are  doing things pretty simple though. I mean, we plant our rose in the plastic  and don't have to hand water of course, cause we do the drip irrigation now, but  we still have to maintain in between the rows and we just weedy and mow to make it look nice.  So yeah, we and.

31:27
for like that's just the gardens but for the rest of the store I didn't hire a baker my mom looked at me she's like who's gonna bake for this and I was like I guess I am I always made cakes when I was a kid and I love baking so I just jumped right in and decided I would be the baker and I would make pies you should have seen the huge bowl of pie dough I was making up every week

31:55
And, you know, making it by hand, rolling it out by hand.  I'm cutting up all the fruit for the fillings, making everything from scratch.  And so  probably our third year in, my stepfather gifted me a giant mixer, which that was a game changer for the kitchen and the baking. Cause then I could mix up large batches of cake. I could mix my pie dough in that.

32:22
And so, yeah, I would say we definitely have taken baby steps and it's taken us  about this long to kind of get to where I feel super confident in everything that we're doing. I kind of know  the ropes of everything. I feel like I've finally got it,  got it down to know like, you know, that we're making it and  that I kind of just know what I'm doing now.

32:50
If that makes sense.  It totally does. And you're proving the point that anything worth having is  worth waiting for  and that you don't start out an expert. Everything is a learning curve and you are now at  the far end of the learning curve. So  again, congratulations, Emily, for  having the courage and  whatever it took to get this started and get this far because it's a lot.

33:19
Thank you. And my mom, she's a huge part of this with me.  We're business partners and  we have done everything together and she's amazing.  So I definitely have not done this all on my own.  We're a great team when it comes to the business and yeah, I'm so thankful for her  because it would not have been possible without her.  One thing to mention too is we also...

33:47
on my mom's farm at her house, have a wedding venue.  so that,  my mom really focuses on that. She's the wedding manager  and gets everything ready.  And so having the weddings has really helped out our farm because it's all kind of falls under the same business, two different locations though.  But yeah, that's another.

34:14
another thing that has really helped us to have extra income and be able to do more with everything.

34:23
Fantastic. I love it. And shout out to mom. Good job, mom. Congratulations, mom too.  All right, Emily, I try to keep these to half an hour. We're almost 35 minutes. So where can people find you? You can find us  online  at the Homestead Farm, sorry, www.homesteadfarmmarket.com. We are on Facebook.

34:47
the Homestead Farm at Fruit Hill Orchard. We are on Instagram at the Homestead Farm VA.  And then if you are traveling through Winchester, Virginia, you can find us  at 2502 North Frederick Pike, Winchester, Virginia 22603.  We are open with the farm market and the sugar shack. Typically April through November, we do a small Christmas shop and then we close up.

35:15
January, February, March. But anyway, yes, thank you so much for having me on here and I look forward to hearing more of your podcasts and yeah, thank you. Thank you. And as always, people can find me at atinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Emily, I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Thank you. You too. Happy 4th of July. Yeah. Happy Independence Day. Thanks so much, Emily. a great day. Thanks. You too. Bye.