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Hoch Orchard is small family farm located West of LaCrescent and South of Nodine Minnesota. Our orchard's first trees were planted in the mid 1940's. There are only a handful of these old trees left on the farm today. Our orchard operation consists of about six acres of the original plantings of large standard size trees. The majority of our orchards are new young trees planted in the past five years. These new orchards are high-density plantings on dwarfing rootstock. We now have between 4000 and 5000 young trees planted on approximately fifteen acres. We are looking forward to the next few years as our new plantings come into production. There are many new high quality varieties in these new orchards and we are excited about bringing these new apples to market.
We have over fifty apple varieties planted on our farm. Many of the newest ones are just coming into production. Some of these new varieties have been offered at the farmers markets and soon will be available to wholesale buyers. Our Honeycrisp production should increase drastically in the next couple years. We should also see Zestar, Sweet 16, Ginger gold and several other great tasting new varieties increase in production over the next few years. Apples are not our only crop. We have about two acres of wine grapes and a small amount of berries and vegetables. We also grow other tree fruit for sale at the farmer's markets. We have around 100 young plum trees that are just coming into production; we have a few apricots, cherries, pears, and some peach trees. The peach trees are an experiment that we hope will pay off. The key is finding a growing method that will help the tender peach trees survive our harsh winters. There is nothing quite like a tree ripened peach. Hopefully this project will be at least somewhat successful so we can offer tree-ripened peaches to customers at the farmer's market. |
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PAST PUBLICATIONS 2002 Brochure (DOC format) |
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2002 Brochure (TXT format) |