Valley Bounty: Roundhill Orchards

Published August 31, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette

The Fruits of a Hot Summer

“I know people that won’t even touch yellow tomatoes,” says Kate Miller Carl, the matriarch of Roundhill Orchards in Southampton. “To me, if there’s something novel, I want to try it just to see what it’s like.”

When Carl and her now late husband, Alfred R Carl Jr., first started Roundhill Orchards decades ago, the most novel fruit they grew was unusual varieties of apples. Today the orchard grows fruit in every color of the rainbow. Viewing change positively, Carl is open to trying something new. Could that help the orchard adapt to a changing climate? Maybe. At the very least, her enthusiasm for new tastes and experiences is a welcome sign for customers looking for the same.

Running the orchard is a family affair. Each of the two main operators, Kate Miller Carl and her son, Andrew Carl, live and farm on different parcels of land passed down through the family. Her daughter, Jenny Kapinos-Coleman, also helps when she can.

“Whimsical” is how Carl describes the main orchard property where she lives at 1 Douglas Rd, right off Rt 10 in Southampton. Rows of fruit trees and bushes bend along the edges of fields, and flowers are planted all over, splashing color in between the lines.

When Carl inherited her property, it was home to many old, full-sized apple trees, unkempt and no longer productive. She and her husband removed these and planted 600 new semi-dwarf apple trees in their place. With diligent pruning, the new ones stay a much more manageable 12 feet tall.

Those apple trees, now growing 26 varieties of apples, remain the core of the whole orchard business. Yet it wasn’t long before other fruit arrived on the scene. Blueberries and blackberries. Peaches and pears. And of course, raspberries: red ones, black ones, summer-bearing varieties and fall-bearing ones too.

“The fall raspberries are beginning now,” says Carl. “Once they really start cranking, it’ll just be a wall of red.”

Fall raspberries and apples are the two crops that Roundhill Orchards offers for pick-your-own in Southampton. Raspberry picking won’t begin until mid-September, but apples are almost ready. The orchard maintains a limited online presence, but customers can check pick-your-own availability by calling the number listed on their Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) online guide listing (buylocalfood.org/farmguide).

Two newer fruits that Roundhill Orchard grows, both on the land managed by Carl’s son, are hardy kiwis and pawpaws.

“To me, growing new things is what makes farming interesting,” says Carl. “You can buy some fruit at the grocery store, but not things like this. Doesn’t that make you curious?”

Hardy kiwis are the size of a large grape with smooth green skin. On the inside, they look and taste very similar to the larger, more familiar fuzzy kiwifruit grown in warm climates. Pawpaws, which are indigenous to the Appalachians and Midwest, are quickly gaining a following among farmers and foodies.

“Pawpaws are sometimes called a custard apple, because they taste a little like a banana custard,” Carl explains. “Not everyone likes them, but the people that do love them. They’ll ask weeks in advance when the pawpaws will be ready.”

The harvest date of any of their crops is a moving target that depends a lot on the weather. “This year, everything feels so out of whack,” Carl says. “Things are a good ten days to two weeks earlier than usual.”

She thinks the main culprit is heat, and the data agrees we’ve had a sweltering summer. According to the National Weather Service, average daily temperatures near Southampton were three to four degrees above normal across May, June, and July, reaching above 85 degrees 27 times in that span. It’s not just western Massachusetts that’s feeling the heat either. Scientists just reported last July was the hottest month ever recorded. In fact, the last 14 months in a row have broken records for average high temperatures in each respective month.

Warmer temperatures and erratic weather patterns, fueled by climate change, pose real challenges for New England fruit growers. While last year’s cold snaps devastated many crops, this year’s relentless heat has shortened harvest seasons, increased pests, and made fieldwork more challenging.

“When I was little girl,” she says, “we’d have the Memorial Day parade at the cemetery in Southampton, where a huge hedge of purple lilacs was always in full, glorious bloom. Now, 60 years later, the blossoms are dead and brown by Memorial Day.”

“Some people don’t realize that things are really changing,” she continues. “If you’re not outside working in the middle of it, you might not see it. But for us it’s challenging.”

A chaotic climate is especially challenging for farms that grow just a few crops. Farms like Roundhill Orchard are more resilient because they don’t put all their eggs in one basket. If one crop struggles, others may do alright and keep income flowing.

Thankfully, this year has been a good year for most things. Apples, peaches, and fall raspberries are ready now. Pears are on the verge, and pawpaws and kiwis are still to come, leaving a lot to look forward to.

Roundhill Orchards sells a lot of fruit at their own farm stands, one at the Douglas Rd location and another at 115 Southampton Rd in Holyoke (the latter is closed when it rains). They attend the Florence Farmers Market too (every Wednesday from 2-6pm through October at the Florence Civic Center) and sell fruit to Small Oven Bakes in Easthampton.

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA. To learn more about local farms near you and what they’re growing, visit buylocalfood.org.