In Good Growing Season
(Continued from Pago A 24)
orchards. They also market Red
Delicious, Golden Delicious,
Empire, Wincsap, Mclntosh, and
others.
An attraction to customers at the
market is the scent of the ripe fruit,
which “you can smell all tire way
out to the parking lot,” said Scholl.
The market is open at lOajn.
but people, especially at the start of
peach and apple seasons, line up
outside, looking in the window,
ready to purchase at 9:30 or earlier.
The orchard begins pressing
apples for cider in September.
The Scholls use a cider press
built by Orchard Equipment and
Supply of Conway, Mass, in 1965
and modified to grind up a larger
George Scholl, right, works full-time as a claims investi
gator for an insurance company and maintains the trees.
Faith, his wife, runs the farm market, dealing with the cus
tomers. George said, “Actual tree work to me is therapy.”
Here they sort through family photo albums.
quantity of apples per hour. Scholl
said the machine can produce up to
about 100 gallons of dder per
hour. Pressing is two to three times
a week at 100-120 gallons per
pressing.
“We try to keep the cider fresh,”
he said. The Scholls don’t want to
sell cider older than three days.
They press about 2,000-3,00 gal
lons per year.
In making cider, the Scholls
blend five varieties for maximum
flavor, he noted. The varieties
include Red and Golden Delicious,
Wincsap, Empire, and Mclntosh.
Often, Romes and Northern Spy
ate used.
Scholl noted that an apple is 80
percent juice. The cider is bottled
Part-time work Is also provided by Betty Jaxheimer, George’s aunt, who lives near
by and helps out at the form market.
at the orchard. The pulp is cither
sold as deer feed or dumped.
The cider is unpasteurized and
no preservates are used. Cider
pasteurization “is a big issue in the
industry," he said. Many orchards
are switching to pasteurization at a
cost of $15,000-$20,000 per
machine.
Scholl sells no spring flowers or
bedding plants. However, the
orchard sells cut flowers and
mums in the fall. “It's something
to add color to the stand," he said.
Customers have often com-
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merited cm shopping at the market
For them, entering the market in
the summer and fall "is like going
into another world,” he said, with
the color of things grown locally to
brighten the day.
The holiday season, especially
right before Thanksgiving and into
the Christmas season, are busy
ones for the Scholls. In addition,
the annual Bethlehem Music Fcst
is held in the summer, which draws
a lot of business to the farm
market
The past several years have
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offered their own challenges to the
orchard growers. In 1992, a hail
storm “wiped us out,” said Scholl,
destroying the fruits at the Kemp
ton farm. While they salvaged a
good portion of the crop, many of
the fruits that year were nicked and
scarred.
“We got help where we could
from other growers,** he said.
Customers were so supportive
that Scholl believes that sales actu
ally increased that year.
(Turn to Page A 39)
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