I’m not a fan of beer, although Stephen is – I’m more of a wine girl. But, I do love a good cider. So when we drove past Meadowlark Farm Orchard & Cidery on our way to Cowley Lake, I knew we needed to stop by when they were open on Friday.
We were not disappointed.
Tom, the owner, met us and spent time not only telling us about the ciders available, but he also walked the orchards with us, explaining the processes of apple and peach growth.
We bought one of each cider (two of the one that sounded the tastiest – I’m not a good sharer, sorry mom!).
Once our bottles were safely tucked away in the car, Stephen, Truffles, Tom and I headed into the apple orchard. It was nice being able to bring Truffles along so she could enjoy the walk and get all the apple and peach sniffs.
A few fun facts about the Apple Orchard:
- Meadowlark grows 25 different types of apples (and just as many types of peaches).
- Apples (generally) fruit from July through the end of October.
- The Australia and New Zealand varieties grow well in Kansas because of the warm summers.
- Trees yield around 100 apples which is 20% of each fruit bud.
To space them out, apples often need spreaders. You can purchase these, but why do that when you can make your own from apple wood that’s been pruned? The spreading is needed to help the fruit buds get the sunlight they need to produce the best apples.
Other than for cider, the Meadowlark Farm Orchard & Cidery is mostly a “pick yourself” establishment and they sell at Farmers Markets. Many moms and children come to Meadowlark in the summer to pick the fruit themselves and experience the orchards.
A new technique that is taking over apple farming is trellising, like a grape vine. This means the apple tree spends less time creating the wood needed to support the tree and puts more energy into creating buds and fruit. While this produces a much higher yield (350% more), it’s been fed back to Tom that his customers prefer not to have the trellises so they can walk around the tree without any issues for small children. So Meadowlark will only add a few more trellises to meet demand and the rest will remain traditionally farmed.
After the apples, we headed over to the peach trees because they’re very different.
Peaches have varietal names as well, but we don’t often see them in the store. You often see ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘Gala’ and ‘Honeycrisp’ for apples, but it’s usually just “peaches” for the peaches. One variety that’s very common is that named after Prince (not that Prince), a man who spent 20-30 years honing varieties of peaches. Because he was more interested in the work, he gave them fascinating names like 4-0Y7 instead of a name. When he passed, his colleagues went back and renamed all his peach varieties with some variation of “Prince” in his honor.
Peaches only grow on the past year’s growth, the red wood. This is why pruning peach trees is so important. The limb below is likely to be removed. According to Tom, it should have been pruned last year. Even though there are fruit buds, the only part that will produce fruit of value is here at the end. The rest, while they appear to be growing, won’t because it’s on previous growth.
Tom had a few grape vines nearby but they will be removed as well. Why you ask? Trash pandas. Yes, wiley raccoons that steal the good grapes the night before they’re due to be harvested.
There were giant apple containers on site from various local farms where Tom purchases apples at times (most likely for cider). They will be returned to the farms.
Final Thoughts
We had an informative and fun visit talking with Tom. We shared about our trip and found out more about him and where he’d lived previously (Pakistan and Afghanistan to name a couple) and that his wife is a professor in Wichita. We highly recommend a visit to Meadowlark Farm Orchard & Cidery and hope to travel back through Kansas in the summer or fall once to visit and pick our own apples and peaches.
Address
Meadowlark Farm Orchard & Cidery, 11249 SW 160th St., Rose Hill, KS 67133
What a cool idea. We had no idea this was so near Wichita.