Ripe For Success Green Bluff Apple Festival Is Entertaining To The Core

Edith Huckaba recalls a time when the fruit would sell itself at the annual Green Bluff Apple Festival.

In many ways it still does, but not nearly as much as it used to.

She remembers when people used to drive up to Huckaba Orchards and buy apples by the box load. Now, customers toss maybe a half-dozen assorted apples into a bag and leave.

A lot has changed in the 40 years she and her husband, Allen, began farming on Green Bluff.

“People came up here because they knew (where they could) get good fruit and good produce,” says Edith. “And that’s what they wanted. Anymore, it seems like the younger generation has to be entertained. I don’t sing and I don’t dance so I don’t entertain.

“People’s buying habits have changed. Women used to can. They used to come here and just load up and get a winter supply,” she says. “Now it has switched to the grocery store habit where you get a little bag full of something and go home with it.”

The Huckabas will be selling their varieties of apples, cherries, vegetables and apple cider at the festival for one final time this year. Both Allen and Edith are in their 70s and plan to retire.

Following the harvest, the apple trees on their 20-acre estate will either be farmed by their son, Steve, who owns a Christmas tree farm across the road from his parents, or they will be chopped down. The Huckabas will continue to grow cherries, though.

Edith Huckaba isn’t bitter about the once small, relaxed festival becoming a booming business. She’s just not in the entertainment business.

In recent years, the Green Bluff Apple Festival, which gets underway Saturday and continues every weekend through October, has mutated from a simple produce buyer’s market to a widely attended, entertainment-thick fair.

The emphasis is still on selling produce but many farmers and growers have gotten into the spirit of the month-long fruitopia and are giving visitors something more for making the trip to the quiet agricultural community north of Spokane.

Farmers have opened restaurants, scheduled live music and constructed mazes. They are also offering helicopter rides, petting zoos and workshops in scarecrow-making.

And those attractions, plus produce, are what lure more and more people to Green Bluff every fall. Instead of attracting dozens a day like it once did, the festival draws thousands.

Donna and Byron Siemers’ place is among of a handful of farms offering a maze to those visiting their market. The maze - two acres of Indian corn - is a challenge and involves a multitude of tricky twists and turns. Plus, several animals (kids in costume) roam the tangle to frighten participants.

“When you walk in, the Indian corn is much taller and adult,” says Donna Siemers. “So it’s like walking into a big forest.

“My husband … when he makes a maze, it’s a challenge for even adults,” Donna says. “There isn’t anyone who’s going to say, ‘Hey, that’s baby stuff in there.”’

Twenty-two farms will be participating in the month-long celebration. Just about all of them offer something unique, whether it’s produce, baked goods or other specialty items.

Growers are selling anything from apples and pears to strawberries and raspberries to pumpkins and gourds.

What’s also special about the festival is that market owners allow people to pick their own fruits and vegetables. They will even escort customers to the orchards or patches and show them what to pick and what to leave.

“We take them out on the Fruit Loop Express,” says Arlene Morrell, who owns Walter’s Fruit Ranch with her husband Mark. The Fruit Loop Express is a tractor that pulls carts.

All things apple are always popular throughout the month, especially apple pies.

Roberta McGlade, co-owner of McGlade’s Treemendous Fruit, has a hard time meeting the demand for her apple, peach, huckleberry and cherry pies. With a crew of four, she bakes about 300 to 400 pies per week.

“We do thousands of pies,” says McGlade. “We make them by hand. The cherries are hand-pitted. The pies are hand-rolled.”

Some growers like the Morrells are really counting on the Green Bluff Apple Festival to make up for the business lost due to spoiled crops. The deep freeze last February killed off most of the peaches, apricots and nectarines.

“The farmers up here need this to survive,” says Arlene Morrell. “We’re in the negative. We’re counting on this to pay our bills, not to make money.

“We have almost three-and-a-half, four acres of peaches. When you lose that, it’s going to take a big cut out of how you’re operating. We definitely want the people to come.”

Morrell stresses that there’s no competition among the growers. When her store runs out of something or doesn’t grow a certain vegetable, she refers customers to farmers who do.

“People are not coming for one farm. They’re coming for the total experience of all the farms. And when one of our farmers isn’t doing well or decides to quit, we’re really unhappy about that. We want everyone to do very, very well.”

Although a high volume of people will be attending the Green Bluff Apple Festival, parking isn’t the problem it was when the festival boomed a few years back. Now, most of the farms have created ample parking space for hundreds of customers.

For directions to Green Bluff, consult the accompanying map. All the farms also have locator maps and brochures available. , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Molly Quinn; Graphic: Green Bluff growers orchards