To celebrate in the spirit of our Home & Garden section in this issue, our Marketing and Promotions Administrator, Richelle Boyd, turns an eye to the past and revels in the fall fun of working on an apple farm in Oak Glen, California, when the fruit is perfectly ripe and ready for picking.
“Before I started working at the Indy, there were a number of jobs I held in the customer service field. My favorite was when I worked on an apple farm down in Oak Glen called Stone Soup Farm & Heritage Orchard. I started working there right after I graduated from high school and was immediately hooked by the beauty of the trees and the sweet, crisp air of the mountains. I didn’t know anything about apples when I was starting out, but for a quick study like me, the varieties were no match. It helped that the owners, Tim and Faith Riley, focused on sustainability and a hands-on farm experience for all. Apart from checking people in or telling them their totals, I would walk the orchards each day and look for fallen apples, set up or even help families and groups make their own apple cider, start fires to roast smores, and I even used to keep the kids busy with doll making or panning for gold. Though it’s roughly a three-hour drive from Santa Barbara (give or take any traffic), I’ll never forget the day a family told me they had made the trip down just for the apples! The heirloom fruit was too delicious to resist, even from here. Once you’ve had a pink lady, or a gala, or even a McIntosh apple grown in Oak Glen, easily ten times more flavorful than anything you could pick up in a store, you can’t help but be hooked too. Like other farms in the area, Stone Soup is family owned and operated, and in my time working there and visiting after, the staff still feels like a tight-knit family. I now find myself envious of the family on their trip from Santa Barbara to Oak Glen and may have to make my way back there this October when the apples are ready.”
