SIOUX CITY | Three-year-old Piper picks a peck of apples. The pieces of fruit fit perfectly in her little hands. She holds them up and says they’re friends, then, sits down to eat them, engulfed by her frilly, purple tutu.
Her mom, Hope Earthwood, and older brother Keegan, 8, moved down the row of dwarf trees in the orchard while she bit into the apples and spit out the peels. She’s the birthday girl. She can do what she wants. But soon, she realizes she’s being left behind and runs after them to catch up.
“Mom, pick that one,” Keegan said, laughing and pointing to an apple plagued by pests. Earthwood outsmarts his antics. “That would mush right through my fingers,” she said.
The kids won’t pluck just any apple from the saplings, supported by a trellis system. They’re looking for blemish-free fruit. Their mom encourages them pick the ugly apples. It doesn’t matter if they have spots. She can cut that out to make pie.
People are also reading…
They went apple-picking at Autumn Grove Orchard, located on the northeast edge of Sioux City, for Piper’s birthday. They visited the fruit farm last year, too.
Stephanie Heger and her husband planted more than 1,000 trees in the spring of 2012 and began harvesting the following year. It’s a big commitment that spiraled out of her flip remark about selling apples instead of going back to work when their youngest, Clint, started kindergarten. Now, nine varieties of apples grow in place of an alfalfa field.
They’re busy and like it that way. Heger’s husband works at MidAmerican Energy on a swing shift while she’s actually returned to work part-time at an insurance company, which leaves weekends open to run the orchard.
On a Saturday, she greets customers who walk up to the front porch of the two-story farmhouse. McIntosh, Gala, Fuji and Red Delicious apples are ready to pick.
A woman with a stroller asks what variety Heger would recommend to make apple juice. Another woman arrives on their doorstep after calling OnStar to find the nearest orchard. An older couple shows up to and buys a medium-sized bag for $20. The man’s happy as long as there’s pie later.
They’re encouraged to top off their bag until the bottom’s ready to fall out to get their money’s worth.
Children’s screams of delight echo from the end of the driveway, where they’re sitting on straw bales to get their pictures taken.
Heger remembers taking her kids to the 33-acre orchard in Mondamin, Iowa, where the trees towered overhead. She’d have to hold them up, high above her shoulders, and beg them to pick an apple. When they finally did, half the time, it would fall to the ground and get bruised.
Now, Katie, 14, Carsyn, 12, and Clint, 8, pitch in to help at the family’s pick-your-own fruit farm, which is the only one in Sioux City.
On a brisk summer day, the younger two sit on the porch, quietly reading while customers come and go. When there’s a lull in the afternoon, they bring baskets out to the orchard and gather apples that have fallen on the ground.
Lacy, the family’s 7-year-old mini Schnauzer that serves as “orchard security,” naps on a piece of patio furniture, tuckered out from greeting customers, picking up apple cores and chasing grasshoppers.
There’s no going back now, Heger says, looking out at the slender trees, situated on a sloped acre. She’s developed a passion for produce and finding new recipes to share with her apple-pickers.
