Andy's Orchard PT 2

This is part 2 of 2. You can find part one of this article HERE.

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All photos by Max Knight @Maxknightmax

Andy’s fruit isn’t meant for the commercial market. It’s not built to linger on a supermarket shelf, slowly losing its soul. It’s picked at the peak of ripeness and meant to be savored at the height of its perfection. Mishandle it, and it bruises then rots - it's a (ridiculously)  fragile thing that needs to be treated with respect. Andy says, shaking his head a bit, "I've had people come in here and say, 'Andy, your fruit is too soft.'” And then, with a shrug, “So you can’t please everyone."

Andy’s life goal is to find, grow, and experience what he calls "strong flavor:–the perfect marriage of acidity, aroma, sugar, and texture. This is the essence of his work: choosing flavor over the volume and durability demands of commercial farming. "I'm willing to try everything," Andy says, "but then I have to weed some out because there’s so much hype around these new varieties. The nursery reps come by, all excited, saying, 'You need to try this,' but they’re only thinking about commercial traits—how well it ships, how it looks on a shelf, how long it lasts before it turns. One they gave me recently, a Yukon something or other, it never had juice! It went from hard green to a paste. I thought: this is no good; my customers will hate it. So I grafted it over. I couldn’t stand it myself; I didn’t want to eat it. I wouldn’t even get close to it. I test everything myself, and if it doesn’t pass my standards, there’s no way it’ll pass my customers’. One person's caviar is another person's chum." … And that cuts both ways.