Bluegrass Belties Orchard
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LATEST INFO
We currently have 17 different varieties of antique heritage apples growing in our orchard. Apple varieties include: Honeycrisp, Snow Sweet, Grimes Golden, Empire, Enterprise, Arkansas Black, Crispin (Mutzu), Smokehouse, Wolf River, Zestar, Galarina, Chieftain, Pristine (Co op 32), Dayton, (Co op 21), Black Twig, Teeple Red Empire, Red Stayman Winesap apples and, adding many more spring 2023.
In addition to apples, we also offer 4 varieties of fresh Peaches and Harrow, Blake's Pride, Bartlett, Red Pears as well as 3 types of Asian Pears And we Forest Farm 3 large colonies of native Pawpaws. We are adding berries and grapes each year. 2022 was the start of Blueberries. We are working to mature those for harvest over 2023-24. A portion of each new harvest will be donated to the local community and/or local organizations. Feel free to reach out for donations. For a complete list of available fruit or fruit products, please contact us or join us on Facebook for new announcements. 
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Creating An Orchard From Scratch
After we returned home from the military to work the farm, we raised tobacco for 2 years. It was always important to us to be able to provide fresh food locally and, well, you just can't eat tobacco. Not wanting to tie up any more resources in the tobacco program, we decided to invest in an orchard.
We bought the trees during the first year (2014), but was not sure where we wanted to plant them. All of the trees lived in buckets designed to sustain the trees until the orchard design was complete. The location of our farm also proved to be a challenge, since the ground is so rocky in the north central part of the Kentucky. It was quite a task to get all of the holes drilled for the trees, but we succeeded! The trees were planted in the spring of 2015 on 4 acres.
A blight of cedar apple rust attempted to foil our plans during that first spring, but the trees pulled through. (We want our fruit to be as natural as possible, but some chemicals must be used due to the humidity of the region.)
We are happy to report that the trees are growing and an irrigation system has since been added. Large quantities of fruit are expected for harvest in the summer and fall of 2017. Things are going well and we actually expect to have a fair harvest in 2016. As the orchard continues to grow, we will be donating available portions of harvest to local community and organizations.
We bought the trees during the first year (2014), but was not sure where we wanted to plant them. All of the trees lived in buckets designed to sustain the trees until the orchard design was complete. The location of our farm also proved to be a challenge, since the ground is so rocky in the north central part of the Kentucky. It was quite a task to get all of the holes drilled for the trees, but we succeeded! The trees were planted in the spring of 2015 on 4 acres.
A blight of cedar apple rust attempted to foil our plans during that first spring, but the trees pulled through. (We want our fruit to be as natural as possible, but some chemicals must be used due to the humidity of the region.)
We are happy to report that the trees are growing and an irrigation system has since been added. Large quantities of fruit are expected for harvest in the summer and fall of 2017. Things are going well and we actually expect to have a fair harvest in 2016. As the orchard continues to grow, we will be donating available portions of harvest to local community and organizations.
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