SUSTAINABILITY IN THE APPLE ORCHARD

Sustainability is something we always talk about. We always look to see if we can be better with it. How can we do things the most efficient way and the least wasteful way as we possibly can? The more sustainable you are, the better you can run, the more efficient you can run, and the better for the environment it is. There's a lot of stuff we do to innovate. Like, we have a full recycling system that recycles all of our water. We have rain catchers on the roof so all the rainwater that gets caught onto the roof goes down into a holding tank and then goes through our water processing facility, and that can actually turn all the water back into drinkable. There's a lot of water that we use as well, so all of those have filtration systems on it. And then once that system can't handle it, it'll go over to the recycling system, and then we just reuse our water as many times as we possibly can. The whole facility is solar-paneled on the roof. We also have Tesla batteries, so on peak load times, we can go completely off the grid for about two hours to make our footprints a lot smaller as well. Of course, protecting and maintaining the land that we're on is also very important. Good, rich soil will give you a good-producing tree and high-quality fruit. As we're pruning, we'll throw all the cuts into the middle of the row, and then we'll actually just chop them up into the orchard, and that also helps keep nutrients into the soil. It replenishes itself. All of our leftover pumice from juice, when we process, gets thrown onto a field, mixed in with local farmers' manure, and then gets composted down into fertilizer that we use on our organic farms. The apples and the trees and everything kind of just has a full circle of coming back and helping itself. As the fruits grow, to protect the trees and keep them healthy, we use sprayers. Any farmer tries to spray as least as they possibly can, but sometimes you have to, especially in the springtime. As it grows, it is susceptible to a lot of fungus and disease. For example, right now we are spraying Epsom salts, which is just a natural nutrition for the leaves that also helps the trees stay healthy. We're lowering the rates on the spraying, so we don't have to use as much water or as much chemical. We actually go down every other row, so we burn less fuel, and we don't use as much water, so the tractor can go through farther. We're always just working on new practices and new ways of doing things. So if a guy comes up with an idea and he wants to try it, we'll do a trial block, and from year to year, you can kind of compare and see if it worked. The great thing about the farming community is there's not really anyone trying to compete with others, trying to push each other out or not. They're all working together, and they're always willing to help and tell you what they've done for certain problems. If you're having a problem with something or what they've done that works better, it's a close community, and they're all here to work together. Because producing high-quality fruits and taking care of the land, they go hand in hand.