DeMille Farm Market has big plans for newly purchased 11th Avenue apple orchard

A local apple orchard is under new ownership.

DeMille's Farm Market has purchased the Hanna and Hanna apple orchard, located adjacent to Northyards Cider Co. at 3181 11 Ave. NE. The new owners are currently taking out some of the existing trees with plans to plant new ones in the spring of 2025.

Brad DeMille, owner of DeMille's Farm Market, said he is happy DeMille's has the opportunity to help preserve a unique local orchard.

“We're going to eventually look at the opportunity to become orchardists and keep this orchard in familiar hands as far as Salmon Arm owned,” he said.

“I think it's important because these are some pretty unique apples. Not all of them are going to stay just because of their age, the ones I'm currently removing now are between 40 and 60 years old and it’s time.

“Those are big organisms that take a lot of water, a lot of pruning costs and a lot of fertilizer and chemicals,” he added.

DeMille said he had initially looked at buying the orchard when it came up for sale a few years ago.

“This property came up about four years ago, my wife and I looked at it and we didn't really see the challenges of the frontage road change in our current location at that time,” DeMille said.

“So we didn't really think that this was a viable thing. ...but Northyards came in and bought it and has been running the orchard for a while.”

A focus on orchard health

The new owners are removing many of the older trees adjacent to 30 St. NE. However, DeMille wanted to assure people while they are removing some trees, they have lots of plans for the future.

“The 480 trees we're taking out, we're putting in 1,500 trees in the spring,” he said. “So it's not scorched earth, but you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs."

The new trees will be planted in the spring of 2025 in order to give them as much time as possible to grow and establish themselves before the winter's frosts.

DeMille said the health of the orchard is their top priority, especially with codling moths already established in the orchard.

“We're trying to break that cycle,” DeMille said. “And that's one of our objectives, is to get the health of the orchard back up to snuff and create apples that we can all enjoy and eat fresh off the tree and then squish them for juice and also apple cider.”

Codling moths are also known as apple worms because their larvae are not able to feed on leaves and instead bore into fruit, causing it to stop growing which leads to premature ripening.

These pests are common throughout the Okanagan, and have been a known fruit pest in North America for more than 200 years. An area-wide initiative, called the Okanagan-Kootenay Sterile Insect Release Program, is encouraging an environmentally-friendly solution to codling moths.

“The Sterile Insect Release Program management has been very communicative to us about what they want us to do and we're in compliance with all of their wishes,” DeMille said. “And they're showing us the way to get the health of this back.”

Under instructions from program management, all trees being pulled out from the orchard are being burned on the property to prevent the spread of codling moth.

Plans for the future

DeMille said they have plans for the extra space this year since they can’t plant more apple trees until next spring.

“The bare land that we're going to create for now, we're going to have some pumpkin patches, a little corn maze up here eventually, stuff for the kids,” DeMille said.

“All the kids in preschool and daycare will have a place to have a wagon ride and grab an apple off the tree and not an apple cider but maybe an apple juice. It’s a good property for that. I think it’s got a lot of potential.”

The orchard will still supply Northyard’s Cidery with the apples necessary for their cider needs. They will also be preserving the unique apple varieties Northyards uses to create their ciders.

DeMille credits his businesses success to the work ethic he learned from his father.

“My dad started it in the early 70s, him and my mom and, you know, I credit my work ethic to what he showed me,” DeMille said. “I wouldn't be able to do this without him.”

DeMille's also has a growing citrus business with oranges sold at the farm market.

“It's really exciting, you know our orange business lately,” he said. “We've done about 270,000 pounds of citrus this winter, crazy, crazy amount of citrus. And we're just getting started I think, so anything's possible.

"When we started off my first year at 300 pounds, probably 11 or 12 years ago. Now it's almost 300,000 pounds,” he added.

DeMille said they hope to possibly open another market at the orchard once it’s established.

"We have lots of work to do in the orchard, and we'll take it one step at a time. Our thing is anything's possible," he said.

“I think down the road this will be an extension of the brand that makes sense not only for us, personally and my family, but for Salmon Arm.”