Published: April 04, 2008 11:28 pm            

Boyer Orchard owner carries on family tradition

NEW PARIS — Attempts to get Matt Boyer to talk about anything other than apples are, well, fruitless.

Boyer, 50, of Cortland Drive, New Paris, has apples in his blood.

The red and yellow fruit also plays a huge part in Boyer’s diet.

“During harvest, I eat five or six apples a day,” Boyer said. His favorite is Honeycrisp, a relatively new variety that has taken the apple industry by storm.

A 1979 graduate of Penn State with a degree in horticulture, Boyer is half-owner in Boyer Orchard, a business started in 1957 by his parents. He and younger brother, Bruce Boyer, bought the business in 1989.

Matt Boyer recently was elected president of the State Horticultural Association of Pennsylvania, a 150-year-old producers organization aimed at preserving and enhancing the commercial fruit industry.

Education, research support and promotion are major components of SHAP’s mission, a 350-member organization.

Boyer vows to uphold these goals during his two-year term.

“I get a lot of satisfaction out of networking with other growers and the close relations with Penn State,” he said.

Adams County is the top apple producer in the state with Bedford County coming in fourth, a designation due largely to the commercial orchards on the western side of the county.

Boyer Orchard was started five decades ago by his parents, Alan and Joann Boyer, natives of Dale Borough who moved to Bedford County in 1957.

His dad, a millwright at Bethlehem Steel Corp.’s Gautier mill, commuted to Johnstown and spent his evenings in the orchard.

“We had the orchard on the side. We had 20 acres, and it wasn’t enough to sustain a family,” Boyer said.

Older brother Dan Boyer operates Ridgetop Orchards in Fishertown.

Today, Boyer Orchard has more than 200 acres in production growing 15 varieties of apples, three varieties of peaches and two varieties of pears.

With three full-time and 40 seasonal workers, Matt and his brother harvest about 150,000 bushels of apples from early August to mid-October.

During harvest, Boyer puts in 12- to 14-hour days, seven days a week. The work load drops to eight to 10 hours a day from November to April, when the hundreds of trees require pruning.

But it’s only after all of the apples are harvested and headed out that his thoughts turn to his only hobby.

Boyer admitted that he does enjoy getting out into the woods to do a little hunting in late fall.

When there is any free time, Boyer and his wife, Ellen, enjoy shopping at The Galleria and other Johnstown area stores.

As the couple become increasingly involved in statewide horticulture issues, they are finding more time to travel. Recent trips include California and Mexico.

The couple has two sons, Wesley, 26, a Penn State graduate with a degree in agricultural sciences who is now part of the business, and Sam, 21, a Penn State junior majoring in ag sciences.

A farm market at the orchard’s edge behind Matt’s house accounts for about 10 percent of apple sales. The remainder goes to a Lancaster County packing house, where they are sold under the Hess Brothers’ label, Boyer said.

The higher elevations of the Chestnut Ridge of Bedford County are conducive to growing top-quality apples, he said.

“It’s twofold – apples don’t like wet feet and the soil here is well drained,” Boyer said. “Also, at night, the cold air moves down and the warm air goes up to the ridgetops.”

That warmer air protects the trees from early spring and late fall frosts, allowing for a longer growing season.

Boyer and his family work hard though never knowing what each season will bring.

He recalls the first year he and his brother took over, a year when a severe hailstorm hit, leaving the crop so damaged that nearly all of it went into cider.

They had to take out loans to pay their household expenses.

But through it all, Boyer, his family and his brother’s family have persevered.

“About the only thing I know is fruit-growing,” Boyer said.

        

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