Summer 2008

Apple of their Eye:  WNC Growers Jim and Jean Saylor on their Orchard

 The skin of the Saylor Sunrise apple is “so brilliant that the trees just look like they’re lit up” in the early morning and late evening, says Jim Saylor, who, with his wife Jean, bred the variety. This apple, as well as the Summer Snow, which gets its name from an enthusiastic customer’s description of its strikingly white meat, are grown only by the Saylor’s at Saylor Orchards in Bakersville, NC. It’s fitting that the Saylor’s would have a variety of apple all their own to give their name; growing apples is their life’s work.

When Jim Saylor was 18, he wanted to start an apple orchard on his family’s land. His father told him that if he still wanted to grow apples when he was 21, then he could. Jim’s interest didn’t wane and on his 21st birthday, he planted his first apple tree.  On his 66th birthday this year, he was still planting trees.

Jean married Jim at age 15 and they have worked in the orchards together for most of their lives.  With such a history, it’s no wonder apples are the Saylor’s points of reference.  Walking the grassy roads that curve through their hillside orchard and passing an old row, Jim says, “I planted those Golden Delicious the day Kennedy was shot.” “We were picking from those trees on September 11,” Jean says at a newer row. The year 2000 brought a happier occasion: Jim added to his many apple-related awards the honor of being named NC Apple Grower of the Year.

As Saylor Orchards have grown, they’ve diversified, planting both “old timey” varieties and new types of apples to suit changing tastes. The Saylor’s now sell to big retailers including Wal-Mart, still their business is very much a small, family operation.  During harvest seasons—in early summer and in September through October—they sell apples and cider that they make out of their carport.

They also sell apples to Mitchell County school cafeterias. “I used to see Washington State apples advertised in the school and it got under my skin,” Jim says. “Washington apples are beautiful, but they just don’t have the flavor.”  With the help of the Mitchell County Extension and the support of Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project (ASAP), they have worked out a deal with the county Child Nutrition Director.  ASAP and the Extension agent helped draw attention to the local apples  with events in the schools such as tastings and ASAP created posters featuring Saylor Orchards to be displayed in cafeteria.  Jean says, “The kids recognize us and they say, ‘Hey, I know them.’ It’s nice for them to make the connection between us and where their food comes from.”

The Saylor’s are proud of their connection to their fruit. “It’s a hands-on business,” Jean says. Recent food contamination scares and outbreaks of food borne illnesses make the value of personally involved growers and packers apparent; the Saylor’s wouldn’t have trouble tracing the origins of their fruit, or how it was handled.  “Anything done to my apples, my wife or I know about,” Jim says.  The Saylors understand why “there’s more and more emphasis on buying local.”

The area that’s home to their orchard—and to which the Saylor’s themselves are local—gives apples a superior taste, Jim thinks. Yet Mitchell County, with its high altitude, provides only a short growing season.  He says, “I’m the last grower in the state to start harvest.”

And there are many other challenges associated with growing apples. Among what would appear to the inexperienced eye almost perfect apple trees, Jim and Jean remark that some have been thinned too much, that the fruit is too heavy on others, and point out marks on the apples’ skin from hail that, though tiny, will cause the apple to be downgraded. This year, deer are plaguing the orchards, eating the leaves off young trees. (Jean finds some humor in this: “They walk right past a Golden Delicious to eat a Saylor Sunrise. They know a good apple.”)

The Saylor’s work long hours, especially during the harvest, picking all day, making cider until midnight, then rising to bottle cider and do it all again at 4:00a.m. Even though it’s not yet the harvest season, their conversation is punctuated with thoughts of things to do—manage the rental properties that supported them when their crop froze last year, pick blackberries, repair the packing equipment, deliver diesel.

Jim makes fuel for his tractor from used oil from local restaurants.  “Go stand downwind,” he says and starts the machine. “What does it smell like?” It smells like French fries, the oil from the other restaurant smells like hush puppies, he laughingly explains. The smell—and the price, of course—are the only differences that he can detect between his homemade diesel and the kind he used to buy at the pump. Jim makes enough diesel to sell to his farming friends, not for profit as much as to help them keep their costs down.

“I don’t have any equipment that’s just factory,” he says showing his inventions, including special brush clearing and spraying tools built from scratch and a spray machine he’s modified to run on the steep slopes of his land. Jim gladly shares the patterns for his inventions with his neighbors and he says the owner of the company that made his spray machine “came from Italy with a tape recorder and a camera” and studied his modifications.  Looking at the customizations, the tools remade for these mountains, you can see even the work that’s done with machines is hand-on and personal.

Small farmers have to be resourceful to survive in times of increasing costs for supplies and certifications.  As business people must, the Saylor’s are often going over numbers. “If you bought a whole bushel of apples at a grocery store, it would add up to about $42,” Jean calculates. “But a bushel is only $18 to $20 at our stand.” Jim figures, “The price of spray has gone up 20 times. If the price of apples had gone up proportional to the cost of growing, they’d be $200 a bushel.”  The reward for farming is obviously not monetary; the Saylor’s do it because they love apples, and the small farmer’s independent, if risky, vocation. 

They’ve succeeded in staying on family land, contributing to their community, and cultivating fruit that local customers recognize and seek out. Taking a rare midday break, they look up at Roan Mountain above their home and down at the apples in the process of ripening and illuminating the orchard again. Jean’s referring to the vitamins in apples, their purported anti-carcinogenic properties, and their enormous variety of flavors when she makes this comment, but it might well be a broader description of what the Saylor’s do: “You could just about live on apples.”