With fall in full swing, Onalaska held its annual Apple Harvest Festival last weekend, with the theme this year being “show your roots.”
Visitors flocked to the unincorporated central Lewis County community of about 600 people for a variety of events, including the festival’s royalty coronation, a parade, an apple pie contest, a cornhole tournament and live music.
It was organized by the Onalaska Alliance, a nonprofit focused on developing new and sustainable business and education opportunities compatible with a rural lifestyle. Cathy Murphy, chair of the festival’s organization committee, said attendance was similar to last year’s event, about 2,000 people.
Though the final amount hasn’t been tallied, Murphy said this year’s festival brought in at least $20,000.
Proceeds from the Onalaska Apple Harvest Festival go toward Onalaska Alliance projects, including maintaining Carlisle Lake Park, Onalaska High School scholarships and the school district’s backpack food program and the annual Easter egg hunt, among other events.
On the Onalaska Apple Harvest Festival’s final day, Sunday, Oct. 6, seven Onalaska farms, homesteads and businesses took the opportunity to show their roots to visitors during the festival’s Farm and Homestead Tour.
“Our goal is to inspire people as to what they can do with their own land and also showcase what we can do out here in Lewis County,” Murphy said.
The tour included some farms from last year’s tour, such as 3 Dog Cider and Brewstillery, Shady Grove Orchards and LaCamas Creek Farm, along with new stops Rabbit Ridge Nursery, Cathy’s Cut Flowers, Turner Garden and Premium Quality Hay and Feed.
3 Dog Cider and Brewstillery
Having debuted the new 3 Dog Cider and Brewstillery Tasting Room earlier this year, Joshua Hail opened up his orchard to visitors again on Sunday, allowing them to tour and taste many of the unique and rare apple varieties he grows.
He started with just 12 acres of land in Silver Creek near Onalaska for his orchard and a total of nine apple trees, including one he planted with his father when he was 3. Hail is now growing 67 unique and rare species of apples. He produced approximately 2,200 gallons of cider last year.
The business was named after Hail’s three dogs, Rizzo, Beamer and Wolfie. Rizzo and Beamer have died, but Wolfie is still helping out with harvests.
“Wolfie thinks every apple is a green, delicious tennis ball just for him,” Hail said. “When we’re out picking, I have to chase him away and say, ‘One apple per tree, Wolfie.’”
The tasting room is located a few miles away from the orchard just west of Salkum at 2040 U.S. Highway 12 in a heritage barn formerly owned and built by Lewis County’s Hadaller family in 1932. Hail has also started planting apple trees on the land surrounding the tasting room.
He purchases many of his apple trees and scion wood from David Benscoter’s Lost Apple Project. During the farm tour, Hail sampled various apple varieties and talked about the benefits of certain varieties.
“Quinces will hang on forever. Last year, I had a crate full of quinces and it smelled like flowers in my barn for two months, and it’s kind of tamed down, but the cider smelled like jasmine,” Hail said.
Other apple varieties he showcased included the Niedzwetzkyana apple — also known as a Borat apple — the Harry Masters chiseled jersey apple, the Esopus Spitzenburg apple — which was known as Thomas Jefferson’s favorite variety — and the Calville Blanc d’Hiver apple.
Hail discussed some of the hazards of growing apples, from rabbits eating the bark off of younger trees to apple anthracnose. A fungal infection that affects apple trees in the Pacific Northwest and areas with similar climates, anthracnose causes cankers and fruit rot on trees, and is also known as “Bull’s eye rot.”
“That one (with brown leaves) is going to have to come out because it will never produce or be healthy, ever. These other two here, I’m still waiting to see if I have to take them out,” Hail said as he led the tour. “All three got the anthracnose. I went through and shaved off the bark, sterilized it and then blow-torched the wound and covered the wound with a spray since it’s airborne. Now I just have to wait and see if they still produce.”
Days and hours of operation for the 3 Dogs Cider and Brewstillery Tasting Room are Thursday from 2 to 6 p.m., Friday and Saturday from noon to 7 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
For more information, follow 3 Dog Cider and Brewstillery on Facebook https://bit.ly/4bot10i or visit https://3dogcider.com/.
Shady Grove Orchards
The next stop on the tour was Shady Grove Orchards, a 65-acre tree farm focused predominantly on growing nut-bearing trees owned by Harry Bhagwandin.
Bhagwandin, originally from the Midwest where forests are full of black walnut, hickory nut, hazelnut, chestnut trees and more, believes nut-bearing trees in this region can be used for sustainable forestry practices, as they produce both food and timber.
While still growing many nut-bearing trees in his orchards, he’s now branching out though and beginning to plant coastal and giant sequoia redwood trees.
“This is a new thing for me. I was here in the woods after this last heat dome and thought, ‘What if this is the new norm?’ I’m seeing dead trees all throughout Lewis County,” Bhagwandin said. “What if 30 to 60 years from now, my kids are like, ‘These trees are of no value to me, they’re all dead?’ So, diversify your portfolio.”
While redwood trees did once grow throughout the Pacific Northwest, including in Washington, most died off during the last ice age due to cooling temperatures.
“It drove them south and they never came back north. Nobody has been able to answer why,” Bhagwandin said.
Now, he’s participating in what’s called “assisted migration,” which involves humans physically planting them in areas where they are now.
“That’s controversial because you’re upsetting an ecology, and there’s unintended consequences, and we have enough of those examples,” Bhagwandin said. “So, I’m advocating for them on commercial timberland, where you have already upset the ecology.”
He chose redwoods due to their ability to survive both droughts and periods of excessive rainfall. Recently, he visited a fellow tree farmer in Oregon who has also shifted to growing redwood trees as opposed to Douglas fir trees, which he considered “obsolete.”
In addition to their hardiness, the redwoods grow twice as fast as Douglas firs, produce more usable timber material and are good shade trees. They can live up to 2,000 years. Redwoods have natural chemicals that help protect against insects and fungal decay.
Farmers growing them might still choose to harvest the timber, as redwood is much more valuable than other timber such as Douglas fir. According to Bhagwandin, redwood lumber currently fetches close to $5,000 per thousand board feet, compared to Douglas fir lumber which goes for around $1,200 per thousand board feet.
During the farm tour, he spent time networking with fellow farmers in the region and selling coastal and giant sequoia redwood saplings.
“Right now, I’ve got a thousand trees that I’m going to put in the ground this spring,” Bhagwandin added.
Aside from the trees, Bhagwandin has a greenhouse with vegetables, fruits and seedlings. Together with his family, they produce and sell a variety of products from what they grow, and also run Shady Grove Rejuvenation at the farm, which offers a variety of therapeutic massage services.
For information on purchasing trees from Bhagwandin or on Shady Grove Rejuvenation, call 360-978-6400 or visit https://shadygrove.massagetherapy.com/home.
Rabbit Ridge Nursery
Originally a wholesale supplier of the DeGoede Bulb Farm and Gardens in Mossyrock, Kelly Verd now owns and operates her own nursery business out of her home in Onalaska.
Verd sells wholesale flowers, herbs, vegetables and fruits to local stores and is working on opening up a retail-facing location. Currently, she only sells seasonally and through appointments.
Verd has also branched out from horticulture and breeds Flemish giant rabbits, German short-haired pointer dogs and goats for sale along with a rare species of geese, though the geese aren’t for sale yet, according to Alix Woodford, a family friend who gave The Chronicle a tour of Verd’s Onalaska property on Sunday.
“One other thing we have here is a Ben Franklin tree, which is for sale at the moment and completely extinct in the wild,” Woodford said.
Originally introduced to Europe from North American in the mid-1700s by botanist John Bartram, he named the trees after his family friend and U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin after discovering them along river banks in Georgia.
All surviving Ben Franklin trees today are descended from the seeds Bartram and his son, William Bartram, collected and distributed.
Along with the Ben Franklin tree for sale, Verd grows and sells Japanese maple trees.
For more information Rabbit Ridge Nursery, including how to set up an appointment, visit https://rabbitridgenursery.net/.
LaCamas Creek Farm
Another farm returning from last year’s tour, LaCamas Creek Farm is owned by Laura Sweany and Joe Royce, who are not only farming on their property in Onalaska but homesteading in the very sense of the word as they continue building a new house on the land.
Still focused on sustainability and self-reliance, Sweany and Royce have now completed their food forest, a small patch of land roughly 4,000 square feet in size with nearly 80 varieties of trees, bushes and flowers.
Along with the food forest, they also have a traditional orchard along with a vegetable garden. Currently, though, they only grow for themselves and for Raintree Nursery.
“Both Joe and I work full time for Raintree, and other than that we’re just building the house. That’s where all the rest of our time goes,” Sweany said.
They keep bees and raise rabbits, chickens, turkey and cattle. Despite not selling anything, Sweany still wanted to let visitors explore LaCamas to be able to get a sense of what they can accomplish on their own property.
“Even in small spaces, you can have a lot of abundance,” Sweany said. “And this year, we’ve been a little more intentional about comparing different kinds of growing systems, from a food forest versus a traditional orchard versus a kitchen garden, so folks can understand what they’re seeing.”
In addition to educating visitors on Sunday, Sweany has made gardening educational videos for Raintree Nursery, which are available on its website at https://raintreenursery.com/pages/video-landing-page.
Turner Garden
While they only grow flowers, fruit and vegetables for themselves and friends and family, Mike and Marla Turner still opened up their property for visitors to explore.
Mike was raised in Onalaska and met Marla during his senior year at Onalaska High School. After working up north for some time, the couple returned to Onalaska in 1991 to raise their kids and have remained there ever since.
Originally, they were living in an old double-wide trailer on the property, but built their home along with a barn and garage around 12 years ago. Now, they have chickens, two steers, a cat and dog to keep them company.
Additionally, they began planting apple, pear and cherry trees along with blueberries, raspberries and grape vines. Marla also began tending to a flower garden, which is now filled with daffodils, dahlias, gladiolus and more.
“People were impressed with the flowers, and everybody kept asking, ‘Do you sell the gladiolus,’ and we have to tell them, ‘No, we just grow them for ourselves,’” Mike said.
They also keep bees to help pollinate the flowers.
“When we do well with the bees, we sell the honey,” Marla said.
Unfortunately, though, the past few winters they have had trouble keeping their hives alive.
As for why they have chosen to garden so much, Mike explained with the 5-acre plot they live on they had essentially two choices — develop it and work the land, or watch as invasive blackberries grow.
“They just take over,” Mike added.
They got cattle to help keep their land clear, which helped improve soil quality. They’ve also installed solar panels, which have been a win for them so far, though they advised visitors to research as the tax breaks have changed since they installed them.
A geothermal heat pump was installed during their home’s construction, which they feel has also been a good investment, allowing them to tap into the earth’s constant temperature to regulate heating and cooling year-round.
Cathy’s Cut Flowers
Having lived in Onalaska for 30 years, Cathy Simons manages 5 acres of land in the area to grow flowers for her business, Cathy’s Cut Flowers, which she founded in 2013.
Originally, Simons and her family only grew flowers and vegetables for themselves, but after her sister asked her to start helping make flower bouquets and selling them at the Chehalis Farmers Market, she decided she wanted to open her own business.
Simons sells her flowers year-round at the Oregon Flower Growers Association’s Portland Flower Market by growing a wide variety that bloom at different times throughout the year. These include peonies, tulips, mums, roses, daffodils, poppies, delphiniums, anemones, ranunculus, dahlias and more.
She has multiple greenhouses as well to grow year-long and in any weather.
“This (greenhouse) is getting ready to be tilled up, and we’re going to put ranunculus, anemones and sweet peas in here,” Simons said. “This other one is our newest house, and it’s mostly mums.”
For more information, follow Cathy’s Cut Flowers on Facebook or Instagram, or visit its website at https://www.cathyscutflowers.com/.
Premium Quality Hay and Feed
The last stop on the tour was Premium Quality Hay and Feed, located at 712 Leonard Road just off of U.S. Highway 12 behind the Mobil gas station.
It is owned by Tim and Tracie O’Brien, who also own the Tack Room Too, a saddle, bridle and bit-fitting business in Tumwater. They purchased Premium Quality Hay and Feed about four years ago from its former owner, Ron Duryea, according to manager Frank Swenson.
The store offers a variety of livestock and pet food and supplies, along with feed and farm equipment available for sale and rent and, of course, hay. Additionally, the store does offer deliveries.
“We don’t have quite the (supplier) buying power that Tractor Supply or Walmart has, but with what you save in gas, we stay pretty competitive with the stores in town,” Swenson said.
Premium Quality Hay and Feed is open Monday through Saturday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information, visit the business’ website at https://premiumqualityhayandfeed.com/.
