Saylor Orchard

We know that food grown on healthy land with healthy farming is healthy food. We act as stewards of this land, caring for its health to support yours.

• My dad bought the land that Saylor Orchard is now on during what is known as the great depression.   I wanted to set the land in orchard when I finished high school in 1960.  He said no, I guess he though I would set it and then leave the work to him.  He said that if I still wanted to set it when I was 21 that I could have it.  I ordered the first 300 trees from Stark Bros. in the fall of 1962 for a spring shipment.  I was 21 on the 25th of March 1963, I already had the trees here so I started setting trees on my 21st. birthday.  I also had a second setting in the fall  on Nov. 22, 1963, the day president John Kennedy was assassinated.  Jean and I were married Dec. 21st. that same year.  The following year I grafted 3,000 trees that I grew in a nursery.  Some of the trees that I grafted are still in production.

• We have two varieties that we developed here.  One is the Saylor Sunrise and the other is Summer Cortland.  The Saylor Sunrise is a very unique apple.  Some say it has a fruit punch flavor and is our best seller.  The Summer Cortland is a chance seedling that we found in our nursery.  It is a large apple with snow white flesh identical to the fall Cortland except the color of the peel and it is ready to pick three months earlier (mid-July).   Our customers say it is the best apple they have ever found for apple sauce and apple butter.