Meet Maria from Sunrise Orchards
Over twenty years of growing apples in Yakima, Washington, and what Maria Gonzalez has learned about picking fruit at exactly the right moment.
· 2 min read
Maria Gonzalez planted her first block of apple trees outside Yakima, Washington in 2005. Today Sunrise Orchards covers 85 acres and grows 18 apple varieties, along with pears, cherries and the peaches her regulars wait for every summer. She still walks the rows most mornings before the picking starts.
“People think the hard part is the picking,” she told me. “It's really the waiting.” Every apple is picked by hand, and each variety comes off the tree when the fruit says it's ready, not when the calendar does. She checks the colour around the stem, how firm it is and how it tastes, and a single block of Honeycrisp might be picked over two or three passes as different trees catch up.
The orchard is certified organic and Salmon-Safe, which means the way the land is farmed has to protect the rivers and streams that run through the valley. In practice that looks like cover crops between the rows, owl boxes and hawk perches to keep the rodents down, and careful watering so nothing runs off into the creek.
Selling directly changed how she plans the season. Instead of sending most of the harvest to a packing house and hoping for a fair price, she lists what's ready each week and ships it within days of picking. “Customers write to me about the apples now,” she said. “That never happened when they went into a big bin with everyone else's.”
Her advice for anyone buying apples: keep them in the fridge, not in a fruit bowl, and they'll stay crisp for weeks. And try a variety you've never heard of. Some of her favourites never make it into supermarkets because they bruise too easily to travel far, and that's exactly why they're worth tracking down.
