Welcome to 2012 at Weaver’s Orchard!!
January normally finds me sitting in my office reviewing the previous year and making plans for the new season. I want to thank all of you, our customers, for your loyalty to us in 2011. Your trips to Weaver’s Orchard to shop at our orchard farm market, to pick your own fruit, or to enjoy one of our festivals are appreciated. You, our customers, were one of the few constants for our business in 2011. I am glad we could depend on you since we were not able to depend on the weather to provide us anything near normal this past year! Justin Weaver, our production manager and his staff were able to rise to the weather challenges and provide us with a good supply of produce.
We are thankful to God for the crops that we did have and that we were able to provide you with fresh fruit from our trees and delicious berries from our plants, as well as the many vegetables that brought variety through the seasons. We have appreciated continuing to build relationships with you as we answered your questions on how we grow our produce and how you can best use our many healthy crops.
As I look back on previous seasons, I find it fulfilling to think about some of the successes that we had. New for 2011 was the opportunity to have my daughter, Janell and my niece, Karalee have their wedding here at our new event site. The new site above our pond was the result of much hard work by many employees and was led by Dean Simpson, our new project manager. We also were able to use that site for many birthday and bonfire parties as the demand for these types of events has increased greatly.
For the first time, we offered a monthly series of cooking and gardening classes during our ‘First Wednesdays on the Farm’ events. Check back this coming summer for more weekly cooking classes in conjunction with our weekly Read & Pick Story Time. We had some record breaking Fall Family Fun Days in October as thousands of people came out and experienced our orchard in the beauty of the fall colors. We also went live with our new blog featuring many stories about life on our farm, healthy eating and thanks to the work of Rachel VanDuzer, our marketing coordinator. Through the hard work of Dwayne Musser, our market manager and Joanne Good our administrative assistant, our new computerized cash register system is now functioning smoothly.
Looking ahead to 2012, we are planning new things coming including an online store, where our customers will be able to order products online and have them shipped to friends across the country. We are looking forward to increasing the use of our event site for parties of all kinds. Be sure to keep your eyes open for the start of our new loyalty card program this spring to give you additional opportunity for savings. In the orchard in 2012, our kiwi-berries will be reaching full production, so keep a lookout for these delicious, healthy berries in our market in September and October. Even though the orchard is dormant now, much work is happening behind the scenes, including pruning and preparing for the upcoming season. Spring planting begins in a mere 6-8 weeks and by mid-April the trees will be bursting forth with bloom and we will once again witness the miracles of nature. We look forward to seeing you soon in our market that is now open year-round. And for those that love to come and pick your own fruit, it is only 4 months until strawberry picking begins! Enjoy the winter ‘ Ed Weaver ‘ Owner and President “Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed.” — Robert H. Schuller