• Community Orchards
• Farm Cideries
• Tree Stewards
• Bioregional Nurseries
• Consultations

Orchards Near You

Community work days can be a big
help to any local orchardist.
(source: The Principles of Fruit
Growing by L.H. Bailey, 1897, 1926.)

Fruit grown locally comes fresher and tastier. The choice of varieties can be astounding. Families who know their farmers share in a vital connection to the land. And that means folks can be informed about how that fruit is being grown.

Here at 'Listings Central' we aim to help customers find an orchard nearby adhering to holistic tenets. Ignoring the ecological cost of transporting food from thousands of miles away is wrong. What's right is championing the stewardship that goes into one good apple and pointing the way to where such fruit can be found.

We need to grow healthy food in the places where we live.

Finding a Community Orchard

Families looking for an ongoing connection to healthy fruit needs to consider several things.

• Farmers label their growing philosophy under all sorts of banners. We ignore all that jazz on this site, seeking instead consensus on health-enhancing practices.
• Holistic orcharding offers viable alternatives to chemical dependency. Still, this decision hinges on local pest dynamics and economic factors. Some community orchardists may use a chemical temporarily as a means of dealing with an overwhelming situation. This is not a decision undertaken lightly – our growers are passionately concerned about allopathic ramifications to ecosystem integrity.
• Please feel free to ask your community orchardist about his or her approach to growing fruit. Farmers should be delighted when customers are fascinated by the stories we can tell.
• Health-minded growers are among the local heroes who can help this messed-up society get back on a sustainable track. Orchardists work hard and are always subject to the vagaries of the weather. Accordingly. . .
• Nutrient-dense fruit costs what it takes to grow it. Regenerative orchardists should be paid a premium for investing in soil mineralization and other organic practices that produce fruit that's so darn good.
• Quite a few chemicals are applied for aesthetic purpose. 'Fruit without flaw' is a misnomer when we begin to understand how nutritionally empty the products of industrial agriculture have become. Lighten up, folks! Trust your holistic grower. A little fungal spotting on the occasional apple is not a worm.

Holistic Insight #100   Fruit grown with intimate care nourishes local economy as well as ourselves.

Irresistible Flavor & Medicinal Virtue

Enjoying apples, peaches, plums, pears, cherries and berries vitalizes this life. The so-called 'nutrient density' of fruits and vegetables results from honoring a living soils system that in turn nourishes the plants that gift us with food worthy of eating. Minerals and vitamins, proanthocyanidins and flavonoids, and certainly microbe flora are a package deal when it comes to savoring wholesome fruit. A modicum of environmental reality – from insects chewing to disease pathogens seeking entry – triggers an immune response in the fruit tree that enhances phytonutrient levels yet again. Our bodies utilize all this goodness to ward off human degenerative disease. Ultimately how we grow is all about enhancing the virtue of the fruit itself.