Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/232761
Jim Koan talks easily and expressively. A few years back, he made the news—including in the pages of Good Fruit Grower—by cooperating with Michigan State University in a project to evaluate the effects of putting pigs in the orchards to eat June-dropped fruit, most of which dropped because of plum curculio larvae in them. Destroying those larvae in a pig's stomach should reduce plum curculio pressure—that's the hypothesis anyway. There's no doubt, he said, that the practice works, and pigs rooting about may be good for the orchard's fertility, too. In working in a project that involved an animal scientist, he found himself at odds with the scientist who didn't believe you could raise healthy hogs that ate no grain, foraged, lived mostly on apples, and took no medicine for intestinal parasites. All the pomace from the cider is fed to the hogs. "It takes eleven or twelve months to grow a hog this way, while a guy operating a CAFO [concentrated animal feeding operation]can do it in five and a half months," Koan said. "But our animals are healthy. In Europe, you can't call a pig organic if it's slaughtered at less than a year of age. The more mature meat tastes better." His orchards are fenced in to contain the pigs—and also the guinea fowl he allows to pick up whatever insects they can. The Koans also have a small herd of reindeer, left over from the petting zoo they tried as an "agritainment" venture. They now sell, as dog chew bones, sections of reindeer antler they collect after antler drop each winter. The reindeer, which shed antlers each year, male and female, live on pasture and poor quality pumpkins. No showplace From the road, the farm is no showplace. Facilities are in several buildings—40,000 bushels of cold storage, buildings holding tanks of juice and fermentation vats connected with PVC plumbing, rooms for labeling, bottling, pasteurizing, and shipping. Slow fermentation takes place at cool temperatures, about 60 degrees, in buildings heated with hot water lines and apple woodfired furnaces. He's now building a new facility, a large warehouse centralizing all the cider-making processes, and it will have a two-story storefront tasting room and sales area, just as boutique wineries do. Jim's wife, Karen, is a retired teacher and works with the farm's market. They sold their fresh cider this year for $8 a gallon, more than twice the price of conventional cider. Their Honeycrisp apples were going for $9 in threepound bags, while supermarket retail prices in this big production year were running about $2 a pound. Three of their five children, Jacob, Zachary, and Monique, have joined the farming operation—Zach running the fermentation part, Jake finishing a degree in horticulture at Michigan State and working in the orchards, and Monique, who has a Ph.D. and teaches college chemistry, keeping the books and records. And their daughter, Mignon, a Spanish teacher, wants to move closer to home and help dad raise the pigs. Daughter Michelle, the oldest, is a veterinarian. When told that he would receive the Distinguished Service Award, Jim said he wasn't interested. "I'm just a little guy trying to get by," he said. "But I've always tried to stay active in the industry. I think it's important to help others. People have helped me, and I feel an obligation to give back." • The hard cider operation makes it possible to use low quality and even dropped apples because fermentation destroys rots, molds, and the micotoxin patulin. www.goodfruit.com SUPER! FANTASTIC! WONDERFUL! AWESOME! 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