When we started selling our apples out of our packhouse and at local markets and festivals last year, we were frankly terrified of what the response to our apples would be. Our #1 Grade A apples look like most local growers' #2 apples at best. And said local growers are merely 40 minutes away in Cana, VA, a big conventional apple growing area at a higher altitude, and most folks around here make a day of heading up there to buy their bushels direct from orchards where the average price is $15/bushel.
In spite of this, amazingly, we have never ever had a customer or potential customer say or otherwise intimate to us that our apples are too expensive or not up to snuff, appearance-wise. More than once at festivals we have had folks stop and take pictures of our apples to show their grandchildren "what real apples look like." Although our rural neighbors are accustomed to much lower prices for fresh apples, there have not been any truly local orchards around here for years (and fewer and fewer yard trees), and these people are generally older and grew up with one or more long-since-gone yard apple trees, which were never sprayed. A lot of what we growers would identify as damage, our older customers actually consider varietal characteristics ("Oh, such and such apple always has those spots all over it."). We do sell non-wormy seconds with any excessive dry damage as discounted seconds, and these older rural customers tend to favor those because they don't see anything wrong with having to cut a divet out of a piece of fruit, and they gravitate towards a deal.
Likewise, many of the middle-aged residents out here are the sort to plant apple trees, one, and not be particularly interested in doing anything to help them produce decent fruit, two. So they are used to disgusting-looking fruit or not much in the way of fruit at all, and thus, predisposed to wonderment that we can produce apples period, let alone without spraying conventional chemicals, so that helps locally.
I think our current market is pretty unique in their tolerance for apples that are good to eat regardless of appearance. However, as we spread our marketing wings, we are increasingly having citified folk make the trek out to the orchard, and although they tend to be drawn to us because of our unconventional growing practices, they are definitely . . . different. We sell unpasteurized cider slushies, and of course, have that damn warning sign posted about the potential for harmful bacteria. Up until the past month, we have never had a single person comment on (or even appear to notice) the sign at the packhouse, or when we've carted the machine to very local festivals. But I've recently had two parties come out and initially balk at the slushies after noticing and reading the warning notice. One woman was going to pull a slushie when her husband put his arm in front of her to stop her cold and said, "Read the sign!" She did so, then turned to me completely befuddled, and asked, "What does that mean?" Good question. She bought the slushie in the end, but I consider that experience a harbinger of what to expect in the future.
We have never had to make use of, or reference, any "Eat Ugly Fruit" campaign, but knowing how urbanites like their pat organized movements, I think it will be of great use to get urban people to embrace non-Walmart apples. Which reminds me -- we do take a laminated poster with us to festivals, the heading of which reads "Our apples do not look like perfect Walmart apples. Here's why . . ." I'm constantly amazed at how many people take the time to read the fairly lengthy explanation all the way through, chuckling as they do so. We are probably too contrarian to ever condescend to actively take part in the "Eat Ugly Fruit" marketing collectively, but thank you to all of you who do for helping to spread the good word!
Kordick Family Farm
Westfield, NC
Zone 7a
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/24/2020 01:34AM by Brittany Kordick.