Photo By Roscoe Bradt

By Roscoe Bradt
When art teacher Wendy Vertacnik comes home, she is greeted by an orchard full of both apple and peach trees that arches over a freshly cut lawn ready for excited families to come pick their share.
Vertacnik and her husband, David, work at their apple orchard south of town along side their artistic teaching careers.
In 1983, David Vertacnik planted a group of 50 apple trees, which have now doubled.
In recent years, the Vertacniks have diversified the orchard to contain roughly 100 peach trees on their three acre plot.
The orchard contains a large variety of apples including Johnathan’s, Granny Smiths and Honey Crisps.
With the abundance of apples collected in each crop, 40 bushels are put toward making cider and selling them at their fair and market.
On the weekends, a few students go to the orchard to work.
Seniors Thomas Afful and Isabella Waite both started working at the apple orchard during the orchard’s farm tour on Sept. 5 and 6.
Afful helped with the kids.
“I patrolled with the kids and made sure they weren’t climbing on the trees or yanking on the apples,” Afful said.
Meanwhile, Waite started by working out in the orchard.
“Thomas came out, and I was put in with Miranda [Pratt], and we did cashier work,” Waite said.
For upkeep, the farm work is labor intensive.
During the harvest season, the Vertacniks keep pests away by mowing and spraying, staying on top of the fallen apples and keeping trees supported from the weight of their fruit.
Along with the strenuous upkeep during the harvest months, they have to prune the trees in the early spring and late winter.
David Vertacnik has a little saying about the how thin the branches must be.
“You have to be able to throw a cat through it,” David Vertacnik said.
This year’s crop was very successful. At the orchard, you could see that some of the tree limbs broken from the load of their fruit.