Apples on campus: From the tree to the plate

Nova Scotia is known for its apples.

The Annapolis Valley, in particular, is something of an apple epicenter, where every year the entire region seems caught up in the fruit’s lifecycle, from the Apple Blossom Festival in May through to the fall picking season.

Being so close to apple country means that Dalhousie doesn’t have to look far to find crunchy, sweet and fresh fruit to serve up to its students and staff. All of the apples brought to campus by Dalhousie Food Services—whether at dining halls or food outlets—comes straight from the valley.

Right now, as fall moves in, it’s prime season for apple picking. But earlier this summer, when we joined staff from Food Services on a road trip to the outskirts of Kentville, what we found were apples just finding their foothold, midway through their journey from the tree to the table.

The occasion was another farm visit as part of Food Services’ Farm to Table program, building stronger relationships with the local growers who supply the university with much of the food served on campus. Depending on the season, upwards of 54 per cent of Dalhousie’s food is locally purchased.

The science of apple farming

The location was Van Meekeren Farms, a family business that spans 100 acres of land, not only growing its own apples and pears but also serving as a processing and distribution operation for many valley farmers.

The beautiful late-July day gave some of Dalhousie’s chefs—including Ray Wincey from Howe Hall and Serge Gionet of Shirreff Hall—a chance to explore the vast array of orchards. If they expected to see row upon row of giant trees, they only found a few: most of the farm’s trees are kept at dwarf size, smaller and more efficient to make better use of the space.

The chefs asked plenty of questions of the farm’s owners, brothers Michael and Stephen Van Meekeren, learning more about what goes into growing the apples that the chefs serve up daily, either raw or cooked into pies, pastries and other dishes.

“Growing apples is part biology, part mechanics, part horticulture, sometimes part meteorology,” explained Michael Van Meekeren. “There’s so much that goes into the business.”

There are 20-to-30 varieties of apple grown at the farm, from popular favourites like Honeycrisp to McIntosh to more exotic varieties like Fuji apples. The farm also has five acres (and expanding) devoted solely to producing certified organic apples as well as a number of varieties of pear.

“Students prefer to have more than one type of apple available,” noted Chef Wincey. “That’s why we like to have different varieties coming through our dining halls.”

The farm’s target is to produce around 1,000 bushels per acre each year, or a couple of baskets from each tree. The trees are carefully supported year-round to achieve this, from pruning in the winter, to fertilizing and pruning in the spring, to an intensely-monitored pest control system known as ‘integrated fruit production’ that keeps pesticide use as limited and targeted as possible.

A long-term investment

Another challenge with apple growing is the timeline to production. A tree’s first several years of growth don’t produce any usable apples. That means that planting an acre of a certain variety—at a cost of around $10-15,000—is an investment that won’t start paying anything back until about five years later.

“It’s a long-term operation,” explained Stephen Van Meekeren. “People buying the apples don’t always get that. Customers may tell retailers that we have too many red ones, or that they want all the same size the next year. But we can’t move that fast to respond to those requests.”

What they can do is keep up to speed with what retailers are asking for as best as possible. The demands are often strict: some stores demand set percentages of certain colours or varieties. In other cases, it varies by region: Nova Scotia generally prefers their McIntosh apples red, for example, while in Ontario they grow them more green.

That’s where the processing and packing facility comes in: the Van Meekeren farm can store 250,000 bushels on site, temperature and oxygen controlled to keep them as fresh as possible through the year. And its sorting and packing machinery is state-of-the-art, with every apple photographed 150 times to look for every spot, blemish and bruise that may be on there.

And yet, for all that high-tech machinery, the actual picking of the apples remains much the same as it was almost 50 years ago, when the Van Meekeren brothers’ father, Frank, founded the farm: by people, and by hand. It’s the direct human interaction that, to some degree, keeps a globally-distributed operation grounded in what everyone is there for: bringing good food to the customer.

Which is why the brothers were pleased that Dalhousie took the time to come to the farm.

“This is a great initiative,” said Michael, noting Dalhousie’s commitment to local food and working with the farmers who produce it. “Hopefully some of our other customers will see what Dal is doing and emulate it.