In 2019 we put a folding table on the corner of the orchard and hoped someone would show up. Then I gave a trailer full of people their money back. by Chad
The picture is still clear in my mind. It’s 2019, the year of our first pumpkin patch, and we’d decided to sell u-pick apples. Mostly because it felt like the only way to keep the orchard. Costs were going up, prices were going down, and the returns weren’t enough to keep going. We knew we’d never get big enough for the size to work on an efficiency level. So we thought, let’s see if we can sell right to people.
At the time we had one fold-out table. We set it up on the corner of the orchard, advertised a little, and hoped someone would drive up the driveway. I remember standing at that table that first weekend. Fall air, gorgeous apples behind me, nobody there yet. Is our Square going to work? Will they like the apples? And wait, how do we show someone how to pick an apple?
That same night, a family we were getting to know came out. Our first u-pick customers. They spent most of their time in the Galas, bright red and about as pretty as an apple gets right off the tree, and nobody was in a hurry.
The kids were the best part. There’s an expression on a kid’s face when they pull an apple off a branch that I haven’t gotten tired of yet. It’s like they found buried treasure, every single time. All the kids are like, wow, look at these apples, and keep picking more. Jeana and I stood there watching them fill boxes, and I think that was the moment it stopped being a way to keep the orchard and started being the point.
Then came the first tractor ride.
The tractor was BT. Blue Tractor. It came with the farm. We’d done some repairs to it and I was mostly just hoping it would run. It rattled, it made noises that were entirely its own, and the exhaust went straight out the back, right at the trailer. One more thing I was going to have to figure out what to say about. Turns out a little diesel smell makes a tractor ride more authentic.
Yes, we decided to sell tickets. Five dollars. When it came time to load, half the people had tickets and half didn’t, and the ones who hadn’t paid were looking at the ones who had. I was feeling a ton of pressure. Not about the five bucks. About what a five-dollar tractor ride looks like in somebody’s mind. For $5 I’d be expecting more. Longer. More fun. I was afraid we were about to disappoint a whole trailer.
So on the spot I said, “Those who bought tickets, I’ll give your money back. Everyone else, hop on and let’s go see The Farm.” Jeana totally agreed. “Yeah, let’s show them the farm.” We gave them their money back at the little farm stand.
Then the introduction. “Hi, my name is Chad. My wife and I own Chelan Valley Farms. We grow apples, grapes, pumpkins and flowers. And this tractor ride is going to change your life.”
Nerves, plus an old habit from public speaking: say something to get a laugh. I got some smiles. I didn’t know I’d just named the whole thing.
BT pulled us up the hill along the orchard and into the original flower patch, rattling the whole way, and we’ve been doing some version of that ride every fall since.
If I had to pick one moment from all the years since, it’s four generations on the patio. Hours, not minutes. Wine in hand, nobody checking the time, catching up on each other’s lives, and not one kid begging to leave. But not much tops a great tractor ride. We all get lost in that orchard for a while, and the farm does the talking.
Boy, has it been fun.
