Some apple orchards look like they belong in a fairy tale, with gnarled trees of unknown provenance and mysterious fruits. Not so at Burtt's Apple Orchard in Cabot, where heavily laden boughs are supported by strands of high-tensile wire that stretch between tall posts along the rows.
A printed map of the orchard shows which types of apples grow along each corridor, and color coding indicates the varieties currently ripe for picking. The characteristics of these varieties are elucidated in an alphabetized list: "St. Edmund's Russet — 1870. Rich, nutty, tart, caramel. Looks like a potato."
Along with dairy and maple syrup, apples — grown for hard or sweet cider, the grocery market, or pick-your-own agritourism — comprise one of Vermont's highest-grossing agricultural products, according to a 2020 Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets report. Nevertheless, since 2001, the number of cultivated acres of apples in the state has tumbled from 3,500 to 1,700.
In 2023, a late-season frost decimated the tender blossoms at many orchards, leaving some growers uncertain about the future. This year, though, bumper crops are weighing down branches, and orchards that offer pick-your-own fruit are preparing for an onslaught of visitors, local families and tourists alike.
Greg Burtt, 39, who owns Burtt's Apple Orchard with his wife, Stefanie, takes in stride the year-to-year challenges of operating a nature-based business, driven by what an orchard can offer to its caretakers and community. "You have a lot of variables — disease, pests, rain, sun, different varieties of trees — but there are small, solvable problems in there," he said, "and that's how I approach [the orchard]: Identify the root variables that you're dealing with and find simple solutions to those problems."
For Burtt, the idea of converting the family's former dairy farm into an apple orchard began two decades ago as his senior project at Cabot School. "I was tired of spending my summers putting up square [hay] bales," he recalled. "My plan was about figuring out what to do with the land if we weren't doing hay."
Burtt recalled the wild roadside apples that he and his siblings plucked as children — both to eat and to toss at each other like snowballs. He developed the idea of adding orchard trees to the family's 550-acre property, which they had purchased in parcels over the years. "It was something that excited me," he said.
Burtt's father had once owned the largest sugaring operation in Massachusetts and was also a builder. Since he was 13, Burtt said, they had talked about the possibility that he would run the farm someday.
"[My dad] started engaging me about that opportunity really early on," Burtt recalled. "He loves new ideas, so when I said I wanted to start planting some apples, he was all in. He had faith that it was worth trying, and he had faith in me as his son."
The younger Burtt's business plan came to fruition soon after he headed to the University of Vermont to study mechanical engineering. To his surprise, his father offered him the most fertile field on the farm as the orchard's starting point. "I thought he was going to give me a back corner," Burtt said with a laugh.
Another thing his father offered, Burtt noted, was "the wisdom of starting small." In 2005, the family began with a minimal initial investment that allowed them to purchase about 700 trees. They worked together to plant the dwarf and semi-dwarf grafts in the spring of Burtt's first year at university.
When the trees matured and the orchard opened for picking in 2009, the Burtts sold out their apples within two weeks.
"We knew it was going to be profitable after that first year," he said. And so, with his father's encouragement, they ordered 2,000 more trees.
Early in 2020, when a project he'd been planning was canceled due to the pandemic, Burtt decided to divert resources into building a new farm store that could accommodate a kitchen for producing apple cider doughnuts; four cash registers; and retail space for bulky winter squash, jars of pie filling, jugs of sweet cider and bottles of his own apple cider vinegar.
The timing of the expansion, which was completed in mid-August just before the apples ripened, was fortuitous. That year, as COVID-19 prevented families from embarking on their scheduled vacations, the pick-your-own apple business boomed, and the orchard's gross sales doubled from its 2019 numbers.
"There's no way we could have done [the business] we did with the old shed we'd been using," Burtt said. "It all came together."
Since its start 20 years ago, Burtt's orchard has swelled to encompass 12,000 trees — mostly apple but also some pear and cherry and a few lines of elderberry bushes. During peak season, the orchard might receive up to 4,000 visitors in a single day. Some come to eat cider doughnuts rolled in sugar by Burtt's four daughters, ages 5 to 13. Others love to get lost in the corn maze, squinting through waving green leaves in an attempt to navigate using the position of the sun.
But most visitors show up for the apples, some as shiny and red as hard candies, others golden and webbed with rough russeting on their skins.
Lyndsay Beattie and her husband own Marty's 1st Stop, a grocery store and gas station in Danville. When this reporter called, she happened to be snacking on a Wolf River apple from Burtt's. "It's so big it's a whole meal!" she exclaimed.
When Beattie's kids were small, she used to take them picking at Burtt's orchard. Nowadays, the fruit comes right to her store. "We go through 10 cases of their apples a week," she noted. "We've sold 60 pounds of apples so far today." (It was 12:30 p.m. on a Tuesday.)
Because of Burtt's storage capabilities, Beattie expects to be selling local apples well into the winter months.
Marty's is one of six wholesale accounts that Burtt maintains, along with a couple of area co-ops and the New Hampshire-based Vista Foods chain. The majority of its business comes from the folks who flock to the orchard to harvest Honeycrisp and Empire apples from its trees.
Although he'd never even visited a pick-your-own orchard before founding his own, Burtt said it felt meaningful to see people reveling in the natural world and in what his family has built. "I don't segment life into its spiritual and material components," he said. Nevertheless, he was surprised at how much the orchard could affect people who drop by.
"I've seen grown men cry" while watching the sun set over the apple trees, Burtt said. "I saw early on how much it could bless people."
Fran Matott, a Realtor in Littleton, N.H., has been a Burtt's customer since 2016. He and his family cherish their visits to Cabot, from the scenery on the drive to the "different colors and textures" in Burtt's most unusual heirloom apple varieties.
What keeps him coming back for the Cabot fruit? "It's getting to have the quality family time that is hard to find," Matott said. While at the orchard, he added, his youngsters put away their phones and head for the corn maze.
Once home, the Matotts work together to make crisps or prepare apple slices for the dehydrator. The fact that he sees the whole Burtt family working together in the orchard, Matott added, makes the visits even sweeter.
Burtt, who spends much of each day communing with his trees, finds "a balance of order and chaos within an orchard," he explained. "The trees on their own won't produce good fruit. I have to modify them, work with them, take their natural growth habits and shape them."
He believes that people are similar. "If there's no shaping, then we're more like animals. Pruning is what brings out fruit, [and] it's what brings out a citizen who is trying to help and to contribute to a community and to create a culture that thrives.
"I see a mirror in the trees of the same [shaping] that has been done with me," Burtt added.
His belief in the importance of participatory citizenship has led Burtt to run for the Vermont House of Representatives. He's vying for a seat left vacant by the retirement of Danville farmer Henry Pearl.
Although running for public office wasn't in his plans, Burtt explained, once members of the Vermont Republican Party asked him to throw his hat in the ring, he decided to do it. But first he had "hard conversations" with his wife and other community members. "I feel hungry — hungry to do good work," Burtt said. "That's what I want to do if I'm elected."
As he waits for the results of the November race, Burtt's focus is on the busy weeks ahead. There is cider to press and ferment into vinegar, plus doughnuts to shape and a temporary staff of 20 to manage. Even in early September, with weeks to go until peak foliage, there is much to do.
Meanwhile, the orchard's pair of ducks — one black, one white — scavenged the dew-laden grass, snapping up half-eaten apple cores dropped by careless pickers. Nearby, languid insects buzzed drunkenly in a tote of bruised apples set aside for use in an apple slingshot. Children flopped down a curvy, butter-yellow slide on the playground just outside the doors of the farm store.
Preparing to return to his tractor, Burtt reflected on the work that he has done over the past two decades. "I love being outside on the land, in the trees," he said. "This thing can't exist on its own without me, and I can't exist on my own without this. There's a relationship that goes deeper, and there's a lot of satisfaction in that."