[upbeat folk music]
- Inga: Next, in Menomonie, I met with Rachel,
another Wisconsin fruit grower.
Rachel is bringing berries and currants to life
in her organic orchard.
Hello, Rachel! - Hi, Inga.
- Nice to see you. - Likewise.
- It feels like I'm walking into the French countryside.
- Oh, wow. - It's just beautiful.
- Thank you, thank you; we really like this spot.
- How long have you guys been here for?
- We bought this land in 2008.
We started planting our orchard in 2009.
But at the time, we were living in Minneapolis,
and we had about a five-year transition.
So we moved here full time in 2014.
- Inga: Wow, it must be lovely
just to spend your time out here.
- Rachel: It is, yeah.
- Inga: So, how did you pick this spot?
- Well, we knew that when we got started,
we would keep living in Minneapolis
where we both had day jobs for a few years,
and we found that farmland in Wisconsin was a lot cheaper,
much lower price per acre--
- I like to think it's a lot better, too.
- Oh, of course, yeah, but we also were able to find
a lot more interesting parcel, so we were,
you know, a lot of the places we looked at
in Minnesota were flat, cornfields, and here
we have rolling hills, we have some woods.
- Do you need the rolling hills for the fruit?
- You know, the different slopes that we have here
on our property really does help us with certain things.
The kind of eastern and northern slopes are great
for some of our more sensitive crops
because they keep some of the trees
from breaking dormancy too early in the spring,
and having the really, the nice thing about the slopes
is that the air drains, and so in terms of like, moisture
and cold pockets, they don't really sit on the orchard
in the same way that they might in a flat place
or if we were in kind of a lower depression.
- Inga: So, what varieties of fruit are you growing here?
And like, I'm always surprised,
I'm not from Wisconsin, so I'm always surprised
that anything can grow here after the long winters
that we have, but what are you growing here?
- We've tried a lot of things, but our main crops
are apples, pears, and plums, those are our tree fruit crops,
and then we grow a lot of berries.
We have a lot of currants, a lot of different kinds
of currants and gooseberries,
and we grow a lot of raspberries,
and have just started with blueberries as well.
[gentle folksy music]
- Inga: This is really a neat experience
to be able to be out here in the orchard,
and I would love to see some of the other things
that you've planted.
- Yeah, we can go down here and look at the raspberries.
They are ripe and ready to pick.
- Do you have any tips when growing raspberries?
- Yeah, I have really found that
one of the most important things for us
to have good quality fruit is to pick every single day.
So, we pick seven days a week for about four to five weeks
during the summer. - That's a lot of work.
It's a lot of picking.
And it's exhausting, and I never want
to see a raspberry again at the end of July,
but it really helps us keep the fruit quality good.
We're dealing with a fruit fly pest called
spotted wingDrosophila that will get
right into the, get right into the ripe fruit,
so keeping ripe fruit off of the plants
has been really key to us to stay ahead of that pest
and to just be able to stay ahead
of any kind of weather problems, too.
- Well, they taste delicious. - Thank you; I love them.
- Can we see some of the currants?
- Absolutely.
[gentle folksy music]
So, these are our currants; we have black currants here
and red currants; we also grow pink and white ones.
- Currants are really pretty. - They're gorgeous.
- What do you think they taste like?
- The black currants, you know,
I really like them, I like them a lot actually,
they're one of my favorite flavors.
And I actually think they're a lot sweeter
than red currants, but they also have this musky,
sort of earthy flavor-- - They do!
Yeah, that's how I was thinking when I was talking with Erin.
What are some of those things that keep you going?
I find some days, I'm so challenged
with just everything that's going on around me.
How do you stay inspired to do what you do?
- You know, one thing with growing perennials
is that we've put such a long-term investment
into establishing this orchard
that I think compared to growing annuals,
the joy we get in return is that much greater
because we have spent so many years of our lives
getting this orchard to where it is
that there's just a lot deeper satisfaction
I think in seeing it all come to literal fruition.
And I also really love sharing all of these
different kinds of flavors of the currants,
and also of our apples; we grow lots of heirloom
and unusual apples, and being able to share these
with people who have only,
who only think about supermarket fruit,
it's really a revelation when they try some of these things.
And we get a lot of fun out of that,
so doing farmers' markets, we do tons of sampling.
- Seeing their faces light up as they taste
what a real apple is supposed to taste like in season.
- Exactly, yes.
And so, having that kind of connection with our customers
also just makes it a lot more fulfilling.
- Rachel, this was so nice being able to come
and spend time with you here in your orchard.
- Thank you so much for coming. - Just so wonderful.
[upbeat folk music]