As the fall season ramps up, orchards throughout Maine are welcoming eager pickers looking to find a traditional fall snack or ingredients for jams, pies and other goodies.
In the far northern corner of York County, the town of Limington is home to Brackett Orchards. Anyone visiting will find what one might expect: A small store selling homemade goods and freshly-bagged apples, all surrounded by acres of apple trees waiting for picking.
There are 7,000 apple trees on the property, with about eight varieties, ranging from the common, such as MacIntosh and honeycrisp, to the rarer Northern Spy, a harder apple often used for cooking. The orchard also maintains two acres of peaches and 1,800 high-bush blueberry bushes.
What sets this particular orchard apart is evident in the wooden sign hanging from a barn across from the store: “Est. 1783,” leading most to agree that Brackett Orchards is certainly one of the oldest apple orchards in the Pine Tree State — if not the oldest.
Brackett family and local history records show brothers Abraham and Joshua Brackett Jr. first settled the property, located on what is now Sokokis Avenue, in 1783.
Diane Brackett, the daughter of Manley Brackett, the 99-year-old patriarch of a family that has worked the orchard for eight generations, said Abraham and Joshua received the land in a government grant as compensation for their service in the Revolutionary War.
“I greatly appreciate the history that’s come down, generation to generation,” she said.
Guy Paulin, Manley Brackett’s son-in-law, who manages the orchard today, casually pointed down the hill from the orchard’s shop earlier this week as he told visitors about the Bracketts’ first arrival in the area.
“They built a little log cabin across the street at the bottom of the hill,” he said.
Paulin said the brothers found the steepness of the hill created natural drainage that made it easier to grow and maintain apple trees.
“This is the perfect soil for growing apples,” he said.
Both brothers, Paulin said, sold what they grew, though in those days it was more of a bartering system, where they would trade for other goods such as corn.
“They were trying to eke out a living,” he said.
Even this business, begun more than 230 years ago, was not the first apple-related venture for the Brackett family. Both Diane Brackett and Paulin noted that as far back as the mid to late 1600s, Brackett ancestor Anthony Brackett used to run an apple orchard on land in Portland that is now Deering Oaks Park.
Paulin said raising apples takes a certain degree of patience, as it can take years for a tree to become mature enough to bear fruit.
“Apple farmers seem to be pretty dedicated,” he said. “Once you’ve started something, you see it through.”
Over the next two centuries, generations of Bracketts continued to work the area and expand the property. It’s not clear when the barn adorned with the orchard’s name and date of incorporation was built, but Diane Brackett said it dates back to at least the 19th century. The family knows this, she said, because Manley Brackett has often told the story of how an ancestor, perhaps his grandfather, was working on the barn’s roof one day when an excited man rode his horse into the area to deliver the news of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
Across the street from the barn and next to the shop lies the family homestead, which Paulin said has been standing for the past 93 years. Manley Brackett, like the rest of the family’s current generation, grew up in the house, and Paulin said the elder Brackett maintains one room as it was in his youth in the 1930s.
Over the years, the orchard has added more land, new technologies and new customers. Diane Brackett said her grandfather bought acres of land atop a hill less than two miles from the store. Among the rows of apple trees planted there, one can see as far as the neighboring town of Limerick. Paulin said the orchard rents out the picturesque location for gatherings and events.
Back at the shop, a large building represents the biggest contribution to the business of the 20th century: an enormous refrigerated storage room, large enough to hold 18,000 bushels of apples, roughly the amount the orchard turns out in a year.
Diane Brackett said the room was built in 1961, and granted the orchard more independence. They didn’t need to move their apples quite so fast anymore, making the business much more efficient.
“This was quite an innovation,” she said.
The secret to the business’ current success lies in more than just new technology. Diane Brackett said her father, who attended business classes at the University of Maine at Orono, paid close attention to detail. One day, Diane Brackett recalled, she told her father she was upset with him as a little girl when she learned that her cousins, working at another orchard in town, got 20 cents per bushel for collecting dropped apples, where her father only paid her 10.
His matter-of-fact reply, she said, was, “And who’s still in business?”
“My father has always been a shrewd businessman,” she said.
Today, Paulin said, the orchard has a staff of two full-time employees, four part-time workers and four seasonal pickers. On a typical day, he said, the orchard produces about 22 bushels, now measured in crates.
Paulin said the orchard has always done well with visitors coming to pick their own, but the orchard also sells to supermarkets and more recently has found success selling produce to schools districts in York and Cumberland counties.
Paulin said the orchard has always done well with visitors coming to pick their own, but the orchard also sells to supermarkets and more recently has found success selling produce to schools districts in York and Cumberland counties.
“They’ve kept me going,” he said.
Paulin said he is proud to be a part of such a long-standing family business. Now 68, he still gets up as early as 4 a.m. and works until 7 p.m.
“It takes a lot of manhours,” he said.
Paulin said the family isn’t planning any major expansion in the future, but he works on small things here and there, such as the wooden sign on the barn, which he said he made himself.
“Every year I try to do a few upgrades,” he said.
Diane Brackett said it feels good just to stand among the trees sometimes, knowing she is on a property that her family has owned since the age of the country’s birth.
“It’s kind of spirit-restoring to be among that heritage,” she said.