PLENTY Spring 2020 Plenty Spring 2020-WEB | Page 31

with a nimbleness to move in new
directions to meet market demands.
Combine that with tenacity, courage
and infinite patience and you have the
alchemy for success—maybe. “This
business is not for the risk averse.
Last year was a good harvest but the
prior three years in a row we had a lot
of spring frost damage. I would say
the challenge has gotten greater with
climate change; it’s a bigger problem
for us than it was in the past. We’re
just experiencing warmer winters.”
With a few degrees drop in tempera-
ture an entire crop can be lost along
with hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
If Gene has an inner mantra it’s
probably keep the orchard going. A
Poolesville High grad (his grandfather
was, too!), Gene’s work ethic locked
in early. Attending local colleges, un-
dergraduate and graduate studies in
international economics, landed him
a great position at the Federal Avia-
tion Administration, which he loved.
But it was always about getting into
the orchard after school, after work,
every day, seven days a week, all year.
Time off? He spent it in the orchard.
Beyond daily perseverance Gene
is always on the lookout for new op-
portunities. Sometimes they appear
serendipitously, like the years–long
evolution of the Kingsbury Pride
peach. In the late 1990s Gene, doing
the last pick of one peach variety, dis-
covered a peculiar peach mutation.
Three peaches on a slender
limb were surprisingly green,
while all others had ripened
nicely. Deciding to see if
they came back the next
year he left them alone.
Sure enough, the same
mutation happened
again. The big yellow
freestone peach was
delicious and it ripened
three weeks after all the others. Gene
decided to graft the small, two-seed-
ling budwood to two orchard trees
and waited three years to see if the
peaches remained consistent with the
original. They did. “Then we had to
wait even longer until those two trees
were big enough to propagate from.”
Which Gene did, and today he has
235 thriving Kingsbury Pride peach
trees. “These have been really popular
for the last five years. It’s fun having
them as an exclusive here. Every-
body waits for the KIngsbury Pride.
We picked over 1,500 crates this last
year,” Gene beams.
Then there are the apples on the
farm. The trendy apple business is
a lot like the gotta-have-the-latest
iPhone—funny it’s from Apple. Certain
universities it turns out, function as
growing incubators for new variet-
ies of apples. Fickle consumer tastes
drive the demand for new, tastier,
crispier, slower-to-brown varieties.
As a fruit farmer if you don’t stay with
apple trends you lose market share.
“It’s hard to give that green light to
the dozer to take down perfectly
good trees,” says Gene, as he gestures
to rows of new trees abutting the
drive into the orchard. “I pushed out
three rows of Galas and Fujis three
years ago. They were in the prime
of their life. So now Sun Fujis and
Autumn Rose Fujis have been planted.
I have 600 trees of those Fuji varieties,
but now people want Aztec Fujis! So
where is it going to stop?!”
Nothing could be a more extreme
example of the demand for designer
apples than the creation of the Cosmic
Crisp out of Washington State Uni-
versity that began in 1997. The frenzy
produced 12 million orders with the
caveat that no trees were to be sold
outside of Washington for 10 years
to help growers there. “It’s deserving
of the buzz, ” Gene says, and quickly
pivots to talk about a new
variety he especially likes: the Ever-
crisp with 400 trees already in the
ground. And this spring he’s about to
plant another new variety, as he starts
to chuckle—the Ludacrisp!
Gene is also the current co-
president of the Montgomery Coun-
tryside Alliance, 15-year advocates for
policies that preserve natural open
spaces and rural lands in Montgom-
ery County’s Agricultural Reserve. “I
wouldn’t be farming today without
the Ag Reserve. The protection has
meant a lot to my family. Back in 90s
we signed on to the Rural Legacy
Program. We sold all our development
rights but one, so no one can come
here and develop this land. Back in
the 60s and 70s we had more people
looking at our farm for development
than today, hands down. Unless you
want to buy a farm there is no point
in looking at a property like this,
and that’s why it works.”
Interview over, Gene
with his usual graciousness
says thanks and heads
back to the orchard.
Kingsbury Orchard • 19415
Peach Tree Rd, Dickerson,
MD • 301-972-8755 www.
kingsburysorchard.com
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