Orchards

Harvest fruits. — Courtesy/Countryside Conservancy

Several Cuyahoga Valley farms feature orchards with rows of trees growing juicy apples, pears, peaches, or plums. They are usually located in the uplands-for good reason. Philip Urbank, who grew up on Quick Road in Peninsula, explained, "To put in a good orchard you should put it way on high ground because you have your last frost about the third week of May. [When] the frost settles in the low ground … it frosts any of the fruit trees."

Country Maid Ice Cream & Orchard in Richfield has used fresh fruit in its home-made ice cream since 1948. Brothers Don and Steve Torma, the current owners, maintain about 1,500 apple, 300 peach, and 200 plum trees.

Variety of Fruit

Don Torma describes the varieties of apples and peaches that his family grows.

Credit / Author:

Dom Torma

Audio Transcript

“The best sellers usually are Yellow Delicious, Melrose is a big seller for us, a variety called Mutsu is pretty good. And then we had some standards, the Red Delicious, Jonathon, McIntosh, and it's hard to keep up with all the varieties that are out there. Then every once in a while you'll get some old-timer who wants some apple that, you know, we don't have anymore, but you know Granny Smith always comes to mind. But we have about, I would say, ten or twelve different varieties of apples now we grow. So that's been pretty good. The peach season has really helped us, also. Peaches are hard to grow in this climate, but when we do have them we sell them really good, so they sell like hotcakes, and the main variety of peaches we sell are Red Haven peaches.”