Apple Appreciation: Manson Growers Group Envisions Taking Public Behind the Scenes

Jared England is an apple guy to the core. The fifth-generation grower’s family started planting apple trees in Manson, overlooking scenic Lake Chelan, in the late-1800s — and he’s working to keep that history alive for his farm and others.

“We like to think that these apples are the happiest apples in the world,” England says with a smile, referring to the scenery in which they’re raised, with Cascade peaks towering above the lake and orchards, providing a spectacular backdrop for fruit trees carpeting the region’s fertile soils. “We also think that this is one of the best tree fruit growing regions in the world. This microclimate that we have here — with these mountains, and the lake especially — adds a unique aspect to the fruit quality.”

He calls that quality some of the best in the world.

At 50 miles long, Lake Chelan is the nation’s third-deepest freshwater lake, and its mass helps regulate temperatures in the lake’s valley, he notes, adding that apples develop more color and flavor in cool evenings, when a refreshing breeze fueled by the lake’s cooler-than-air water envelops orchards. The lake helps regulate wintertime temperatures, too, which aren’t as cold, and summertime temperatures, which aren’t as hot. Lake Chelan water also irrigates the trees.

But while the apples may be happy, growers’ exuberance has waned in recent years.

England is president of Manson Growers, a grower, packer, and shipper of 11 apple varieties worldwide, and which represents about 100 small growers who operate orchards of roughly 20-50 acres each, comprising about 3,500 total acres. Formerly a co-op, the collective invested in storage and packing operations that no one grower could afford alone. It gave the group more buying and selling leverage, too.

But growers have faced mounting cost pressures — everything from rising expenses that include labor at No. 1, and associated free housing for migrant workers required by the state, fertilizers, chemicals, equipment, tariffs, and more. Even the advantages of bulk purchases and labor-sharing haven’t resolved financial pressures, according to England.

Manson Growers is considering opening its orchards, packing plant, and aromatic apple-stuffed storage warehouses to public tours to boost education of and appreciation for a longstanding Washington farming heritage and hopefully help reverse souring financial trends. England envisions something akin to the popular Tillamook Creamery experience and tours conducted by the cheese and ice-cream maker on the Oregon Coast.

However, he imagines more hands-on and behind-the-scenes experiences for what it takes to get the official state fruit from trees to taste buds.

The first step was opening Cider Press — a new restaurant, public U-press for cider-making, and retail operation — in Manson in July 2024. It offers everything from tasting flights of sweet cider, freshly made paninis, artisan gelatos, branded merchandise, and gift boxes of apples and other local goods. Gift boxes can be shipped nationwide and customized to include apples, local honeys, jellies, candles, and other treats. The Cider Press and gift boxes were Manson Growers’ first direct-to-consumer venture; it hopes to build in-person and online sales year-round.

The Cider Press, in its attached event venue, also offers bee tours for kids and adults, including dressing in bee suits and walking to nearby hives to see nature’s workers — the ones that pollinate apple blossoms in spring and commence the process that culminates in delicious apples by fall.

Other Manson Growers visitor experiences that are contemplated include tours of orchards, where visitors can hear the buzz of busy bees in spring, or learn how trees are grafted; trips through the massive sorting and packing facility, where apples are separated by size and quality on their way to boxes; and stepping inside chilly storage rooms where literally millions of colorful apples emit strong, perfume-like aromas.

Manson Growers has historically sold about 80% of its fruit internationally to as many as 30 countries, with fruit shipped through the Ports of Tacoma and Seattle. These international markets have proven to be more fertile ground than the highly competitive U.S. retail grocery market.

High costs continue to squeeze profits to levels that threaten individual farms and a way of life intrinsic to Washington’s identity, according to England.

A federal report in February underscored the difficulty Washington farmers face, not just apple growers.

Washington farm income, labeled in the report as “returns to operators,” fell to minus-$396.2 million in 2024, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, ranking the state last in the nation. That was a drop of almost $1.3 billion from 2023, when farm income totaled about $922.8 million. Income in 2022 approached $2 billion.

Washington is the nation’s top apple producer and apples are the state’s No. 1 agricultural commodity, at almost $2 billion in production value in 2024, but a recent Washington State University study found a decreasing concentration of apple commodities in the state between 2017-23, down 7%, with declining commodity concentration signaling a loss of competitive advantage, according to another February report, this one authored by state Department of Agriculture economists and scientists citing WSU’s study.

“The state is at a pivotal moment: we can invest in a future where agriculture remains strong, or we can allow food production to shift to regions with fewer barriers and less alignment with Washington’s environmental and community goals,” reads part of a conclusion in the report, “Washington Agriculture at a Crossroads: A Baseline Assessment of Agricultural Viability,” a baseline for deeper analysis to be published later this year.

It continues, “When working lands are no longer actively farmed, they are often converted to industrial, commercial, or residential uses. This fragments landscapes, complicates environmental objectives, and strains the services that underpin healthy rural communities. Our hope is that by candidly sharing these challenges and highlighting the work already underway to address them, Washington can advance solutions that preserve local food production, protect environmental resources, and create conditions in which farmers and ranchers can not only persist, but genuinely thrive.”

England — as Manson Growers’ president for more than a decade, a role his father held for 45 years prior — is doing everything he can to protect a way of life for agricultural families like his and a key fruit basket to the world. He lobbies lawmakers in Olympia and Washington, D.C., and works to enlist support among citizens and visitors.

“It’s been over a hundred years that they’ve been involved in the apple industry — and I don’t want this to end on my watch,” England said of his family’s operations comprising Family Tree Orchards and about 20 others, all under the Manson Growers umbrella.

An Apple’s Journey

Bite into a crisp, sweet Washington-grown apple and it’s easy to forget what preceded that fruit reaching one’s hands: workers planting, grafting and pruning trees; thinning and picking fruit; and trucking the apples to storage and packing houses, where they’re evaluated, sorted, boxed, then shipped around the world.

Along that chain from field to apple box are opportunities to pull back the curtain for the public to see, learn, and experience what goes into that juicy apple, sweet cider, or decadent holiday pie.

Grafting, for example, can change the variety of a tree or result in multiple varieties on the same tree, England said.

“What we want to do is, at different times of the year, we want to say, ‘OK, in this orchard over here, we’re grafting trees,’ and whoever comes at that time, we will give them access to and tell them about the concepts of grafting or thinning and pruning, and all those activities that all play an important part of fruit quality,” he said.

Other times, the public could view bees pollinating tree blossoms and experience the steady buzz of activity; or farmhands picking the fruit and trucks moving 900-pound bins of apples to the packing facility, where workers, aided by X-ray- like scanners inspecting apple quality, box the fruit for shipment to wholesalers and retailers across the country and globe.

Year-round at the Cider Press, kids and adults can press apples of their choice into tasty cider, cranking a large wheel to squeeze the fresh juices into bottles to take home. Manson Growers also has experimented with mixing pears, cherries, and blueberries into some of its cider, creating new blends it sells in its store. The press is located inside the attached event venue, which can seat 175 people for proms, birthday parties, wedding receptions, rehearsal dinners, and corporate events — another avenue for public connection.

“Apples are kind of like grapes that, year to year, they’ll taste a little different and even throughout the year they’ll taste different,” England said. As people press their apples, they can create their own blends, “a unique flavor profile that no one else can repeat, based on their personalized variety mix and time of year.”

It’s creative fun with flavor.

That kind of unique experience awaits inside the apple storage rooms, too, that England envisions as part of a tour.

“You walk into these rooms, the intensity of that freshly picked apple … you’ll never experience that anywhere else,” he said.

It’s a phenomenon to which 425 can attest. When England opened a room stuffed with 900-pound bins of Honeycrisp apples, the aroma was intensely, well, applelike — and amazing.

“Our main purpose of the Cider Press was, first, education,” England said. “We feel like if (people) learn about it, then they will appreciate it; and so, when they appreciate it, then they’ll recognize the things that we put a lot of time and effort into that make a difference. We want them to be able to appreciate the effort … from the growing side all the way through to harvest and getting it to (market) because … the logistics, just to get it from here to a grocery store shelf, is pretty amazing as well.”

Opening their doors does not come without risks. Such access introduces challenges that need to be addressed as people gather around machinery and in other areas typically closed to the public. But England thinks it’s all doable with proper planning, controls, insurance, and safety protocols.

England believes the public would enjoy seeing more than its Cider Press operations. England gave 425 a taste of what there was to see and do on a tour last September, and it was interesting, educational, scenic, enjoyable, and tasty. Perhaps more importantly, it sprouted new appreciation for what it takes to get apples from orchards to families.

Possible Elements of Public Tours

One element has already taken flight: a bee “school” and a tour. Bees are central to apples; they pollinate the apple blossoms that become the fruit. “If they aren’t here to pollinate our blossoms, we have no apples, so they do play a really important role in getting fruit each season,” England said, noting the bees also contribute to local honey production.

Manson Growers tries to impress upon kids and adults alike the importance of these buzzing buddies through bee tour experiences it began in 2024, an early step in Manson Growers’ public-education process. The tours are held from 9-10:30 a.m. each Saturday during the warm summer months at the Cider Press, where hives are located nearby. For ages 3 and up, attendees learn beekeeping 101, then get in a bee suit and step into the role of beekeeper to inspect a live hive and learn to spot signs of a healthy, sustainable colony. Attendees receive a jar of local honey and a bee lapel pin. Bee tours cost $40 for youth under age 13, and $45 for 13 and older.

The bee tours are just one stop in what England envisions as a broader tour similar to what he shared with 425.

“It goes back to that hands-on experience that we want people to have,” England said. “Ultimately, that will lead to an appreciation for what we’re doing here and general appreciation for agriculture.”

Plans and timing for the broader tours, from orchard to packing plant, are still being developed.

A Field Trip, Literally

It takes about five years before trees produce fruit, so when they become revenue-producing, it’s welcome. That’s five years hoping the apple variety will have a consumer market, sales volume, and price that supports the capital investment, England said.

Mother Nature has done her part before the farmhands do theirs. Bees have pollinated flowers and by September, the apples are ripened and the first batches picked during a harvest that typically runs through October. On the day 425 visited, England took us in his ultra-quiet electric truck to an older orchard growing Golden Delicious apples. He leases the orchard from another Manson Growers landowner. England estimated some of the trees at 80 to 90 years old, based on their trunk girth. Older trees won’t produce as much color for red apples like Galas or Fujis, but tree age isn’t an issue with Goldens, he said.

Red apples, like Galas and Honeycrisp, will be picked based on their level of color, when they’re most red, he said. Apples that aren’t red enough will be left on the trees for another week or two, then picked as they reach the desired hue.

Workers on ladders with canvas pouches slung over their shoulders carefully picked the Goldens, which have fragile skins and bruise easily. Workers empty their pouches in large wooden bins, some of which England constructed as a teenager and remain in use.

He points out the apples’ lenticels: the tiny spots on the skin through which gases are exchanged between the atmosphere and the apple tissues. Lenticels are how an apple “breathes,” he said. Through the lenticels, apples let off their scented carbon dioxide, and by storing apples in chilled rooms with little oxygen, the apples go into a hibernated state to extend their shelf life pending their ultimate destination.

Some apples, like Honeycrisp, have even more tender skin, so their stems must be clipped when the apples are picked to avoid stems puncturing neighboring apples as they nestle into the bins. Honeycrisp are placed in plastic bins that have smoother sides less likely to damage the skin, England said. Each bin holds about 2,000 apples and weighs about 900 pounds. Forklifts place the full bins on trucks, which haul the juicy loads to Manson Growers’ cold-storage warehouses, which can store up to 150 million apples.

Each container is labeled with a bin ticket code that tells which orchard the apple came from, the location in the orchard where it was picked, day it was picked, the variety, and who picked it, providing complete traceability — all in a scannable QR code.

That’s just the start of an apple’s journey to market.

Low-Oxygen Cold Storage

Apple bins are trucked from the orchard to Manson Growers’ receiving facility, where bin tags are scanned to credit pickers for their work, and to check apples’ temperature, pressure, sugar content, and color. That’s all information associated with the tags’ QR code and which will be used later to inform the apples’ packing. But first, they go to cold storage, for weeks, months, perhaps a year.

The two large, chilled warehouses are located next to the receiving facility and each warehouse is subdivided into smaller rooms that can hold about 2,000 bins each.

Apples sometimes arrive from the field with an internal temperature exceeding 100 degrees, so they’re slowly cooled in the warehouse over several days, with rooms eventually set at about 35 degrees, the temperature at which apples are stabilized, England said.

Additionally, warehouse oxygen levels are reduced to about 0.5%, well below the roughly 21% that’s naturally occurring in the air we breathe. That allows the apples to be kept in a hibernated state for long-term storage without losing quality.

Forklift drivers carefully stack the 900-pound apple bins 10 high into individual storage rooms separated by apple variety. If each bin has about 2,000 apples, every warehouse room has about 4 million apples.

The warehouse, counting all internal rooms, holds about 75,000 bins combined, or about 150 million apples.

England shows a large room of massive fans, pipes, and valves where ammonia is added to air to cool it before it’s piped to the apple storage rooms. The cold air, with oxygen mostly removed and replaced by nitrogen, is then pumped into each storage room, where large fans blow the air throughout the room. No chemicals touch the apples, just the naturally occurring gases of oxygen and nitrogen.

Packing for a Trip to Market

Once apples are ready to head to market, they’re removed from cold storage and transferred to the nearby packing facility.

The day 425 visited, Cosmic Crisps were being packed — apples that were picked in fall 2024 and spent about 11 months in cold storage. Cosmics store longer than other varieties, England said. (The WSU Tree Fruit website puts their storage duration at 13 months.) The bins pulled from storage are weighed, scanned, and the apples are placed onto a conveyor for sorting — tracked each step of the way for their next journey.

“Depending on the size of the fruit, we’ll send over a million apples a day through here in a single shift,” England said over the din of conveyor belts directing apples on different paths.

Apples are separated by size and color; cleaned and sanitized with a food-grade soap made from a chlorine dioxide solution to kill any bacteria and remove debris; rinsed in water; then waxed with a natural, plant-based carnauba wax like that used in chocolates; sent into a dryer; conveyed through an optical scanner to be examined for quality; labeled with identifying stickers; then moved to packing stations where people place the fruit in boxes for shipment.

The wax adds shine, but not all apples get the gloss. Golden Delicious, for example, aren’t waxed because they’re lighter colored, so there’s little effect from wax, England said. Virtually all red apples, however, get waxed.

In the optical-scanning phase, 90 pictures are taken of each apple as it rolls along the conveyor, data read inside a glassed-in control room overlooking the packing plant’s highways of conveyor belts.

“The computer’s using the different algorithms to identify holes or spots, and it’s also assessing … the color, the intensity of the color,” England said in the room, pointing to images. “It’s (examining) any kind of external defects, bruising, splits, skin punctures, and it’s also evaluating the shape of the apple.”

The fruit also gets an internal exam via an X-ray-like machine to identify if there is any hidden rot or other issue, something akin to a full-body MRI.

The computers also track apple sizes. England points to numbers on a screen and notes, “27% of the fruit is a size 56,” meaning 56 apples will fit into a 40-pound box. The smaller the number — for example, 36, 40, or 48 — the bigger the apple because fewer apples produce the same 40-pound box weight.

“Cosmic Crisp tends to be a larger apple and so it’s trending on the large size, but other ones like Galas or smaller varieties, you’ll have some that are as small as 216s; this takes 216 apples to fill up a box to get to 40 pounds,” England explained.

He points to another number indicating 86% of the apples are making it into a box based on the quality and 13% are being kicked out for various defects.

Those defective apples might still be used for cider, juice, or slicing, but they’re not sent to market as whole fruit. England refers to such apples as “perfectly imperfect” — perfect for cider and still delicious, but they fall short on appearance.

After scanning, the apples are automatically placed into cuplike grips and sent to various destinations in the packing plant based on their weight, grade, color, and given a sticker that remains on the apple through purchase. The best apples are boxed for market.

The bar-coded stickers can identify which orchard the apple came from, and day it was picked, so if there’s ever a problem, it’s traceable. Cosmic Crisp stickers also contain the number 3507, the universal ID for the apple. (The Washington-bred Cosmic Crisp, which took 20 years to develop, is a cross between Honeycrisp and Enterprise apples and was released publicly in 2019.)

England shows a packer placing size 36 Cosmic Crisps into a box, meaning 36 apples comprise a 40-pound box. Fruit is placed in cupped cardboard padding, similar to an egg carton. Another bar code goes on the box, containing the same identifying information for traceability from farm to table, he said. Based on that code, another sticker is then applied to the box identifying what’s inside: the date of packing, location, variety of apple, size, and grade — all used by stores for inventory management, tracking, and more.

Boxes of apples are then placed in 42 different “accumulation lanes” in the packing house, with boxes placed in lanes based on the fruit characteristics inside to keep fruit consistent when boxes are palletized, 49 boxes to a pallet. From there, pallets are trucked to ports, wholesalers, or directly to market.

More to Experience Than Apples

Some Manson Growers farmers also grow crops like blueberries and pumpkins, including U-pick options; another has branched into hard cider, a winery, and flowers; and others make honey. They represent the collective experience visitors could enjoy on their agricultural adventures, England said.

“We historically have always been a wholesale operation,” he said, noting the trend in recent decades for growers and packers to be more insular due to increasing risk of liability and food safety. “People just started closing their doors to giving access to their farms and to our operations — and really what it led to is a disconnect from the general public and farmers.”

Added England, “Farmers were all continuously frustrated that people didn’t appreciate everything they’re doing and how much hard work it was, and so we just realized, ‘Hey, unless we give people access to the things that we do, the things that we love, and how magical it could be, they’re not going to appreciate it the way we do. We need more advocates for farming now more than ever.”

That includes policy, people wanting to know how and where their food is grown, and other aspects of the food-production process.

All that is critical, he said.

“We want people — not that they’re down there touching everything — but we want them to feel like they’re experiencing it,” England said. “I think that’s really what people want to do and that’s what will make the difference for helping people become advocates for our industry.”