Grounded in tradition, using new ideas, Arringtons keep Barber Orchard name thriving – The Mountaineer

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Three generations of Arringtons. The day this photo was made, members of the youngest generation were getting their first paychecks after helping out at the fruit stand. In back are Stephen and father Benny Arrington. In front, from left, are: Jennifer Arrington, Stephen’s wife, holding daughter Ava, children Sadie and Levi, and mother-in-law Jane Arrington.
Stephen and Ava Arrington
Jane Arrington, left, has known many of her customers for years, including Merry June Burwell, right, who lives in Balsam in the summer and has been making visits to Barber’s Orchard Fruit Stand for 60 years.

Three generations of Arringtons. The day this photo was made, members of the youngest generation were getting their first paychecks after helping out at the fruit stand. In back are Stephen and father Benny Arrington. In front, from left, are: Jennifer Arrington, Stephen’s wife, holding daughter Ava, children Sadie and Levi, and mother-in-law Jane Arrington.
Stephen and Ava Arrington
Jane Arrington, left, has known many of her customers for years, including Merry June Burwell, right, who lives in Balsam in the summer and has been making visits to Barber’s Orchard Fruit Stand for 60 years.
When Jane and Benny Arrington purchased Barber’s Orchard Fruit Stand in 1993, they knew it could change the direction of their farming operation.They could not have imagined how much.
“I’m the fourth generation of Arringtons to grow apples in this community,” Benny said. “My great-grandfather and grandfather sold apples to truckers.”
“Truckers” being those who would take the apples to peddle in mill towns in North and South Carolina, first by horse and wagon, later by vehicle.
Benny’s father, Cecil, started an apple packing house, which Benny had been using as the main method for selling his apples. Jane also sold apples from their house when customers stopped by. She had been trained as an elementary school teacher, but the couple made a decision that she would stay home with their young children. From there, she was absorbed into the apple business. It only made sense to find a way to sell more apples retail, and when Glenn Stewart sold the fruit stand, Benny and Jane took up the offer.
That decision was part of the rebound for the Barber’s Orchard tradition.
The orchard, started in 1907 by Richard Barber, Sr., continued by his son Richard Jr., had been sold in 1977 to Glenn and Gerald Stewart. The Stewarts could not have picked a worse time to go into the apple business. A series of late freezes, resulting in crop failures, and the high interest rates of the 1970s forced the orchard into foreclosure, despite the innovations and energy invested by the brothers. But Glenn held on to the fruit stand, continuing its developing bakery business, before selling it to another family he knew would keep the apple tradition going.
Jane is the most outgoing member of the Arrington family. She is a woman constantly on the move, able to juggle a multitude of tasks and engage almost anyone in conversation. It has made her an ideal manager in an age when farmers have been encouraged to back away from traditional selling methods and look for ways to market their own products, particularly “value-added” products that take the basic crop to the next step.
For Barber’s Orchard Fruit Stand, those value-added products are the bakery goods, among them apple butter, muffins, pies and cakes, many from recipes developed by long-time orchard employee Louise Corbin. Especially those cakes, with their special shipment time of Thanksgiving-to-Christmas, which are sold from the opening of the fruit stand each August until its closure at the end of December.
Another value-added product that has exploded in popularity is the apple cider, part of the business managed by Benny’s son, Stephen. The family produces more than 20,000 gallons of cider each year.
A stop at Barber’s Orchard had been an autumn tradition for many families, both tourists and locals, for almost a century. Now the smells of baking apples fill the fruit stand, for the kitchens are just behind the retail area, which feeds into the bakery. It’s a powerful lure.
When they took over the bakery business, “we had one oven, and we had Louise (Corbin) and me, and that’s how we started out,” Jane said. Today, the Arringtons have six commercial ovens and 12 employees in the kitchen alone, not counting orchard workers and those who work the front of the retail stand and bakery. During their busiest season, they can have as many as 30 on the payroll. Many a young person has had his/her first job working at the fruit stand — another tradition in the Saunook community.
Their success forced the Arringtons to make a decision a few years after buying the orchard.
“We had to eventually go with the fruit stand,” Benny said. “We couldn’t grow for both (a packing house and the retail business).” These days, everything they grow is usually sold through the fruit stand, and that includes more than apples. The farm includes one acre of pears, several acres of peaches and 10 acres of vegetables.
It’s a hectic time for the Arringtons, the span between early August and the end of December. Jane does almost all of her Christmas shopping online — except for the shopping she does in the first months of each year. She has been known to purchase the same gift twice, or lose gifts she has stored away, in the rush of the sales season. Thanksgiving will be the first day the Arringtons take off of work since opening for the season Aug. 1. As a result, “sometimes Benny and I don’t do anything (for Thanksgiving). We just sit,” Jane said.
Some customers have asked them to keep the fruit stand open into the new year, but doing so would require controlled storage, whereas now they sell all of their products fresh, either as apples, apple butter, cider or baked goods. “The way it is right now, we’re selling about everything we can grow,” Jane said.
Though the fruit stand retains the name of Barber’s, the Arrington farm is known as Pinnacle Mountain Orchards. However, Benny purchased portions of the Barber properties, keeping some of that land in apple production. The Arringtons grow 22 varieties of apples, an effort that keeps Benny and Stephen busy year-round. They have spent more than one Christmas Eve pruning apple trees.
“We listen to customers and if they’re looking for a certain thing, we may plant some of it,” Benny said. Honeycrisp has become a wildly popular apple, and the climate and elevation make this area ideal for production.
The Arringtons have about 75 acres in apples. The look of their orchards has changed over the years, from the traditional large trees to semi-dwarf. And now the orchard is transitioning to dwarf trees, with their branches trellised, looking more like a vineyard than the traditional apple orchard. The family has been aggressive in using new techniques, which allow them to get new trees into production faster and increase the amount of apples harvested. A high-density orchard, Benny said, can produce 1,500 to 1,700 bushels per acre compared to 900 to 1,000 in old-fashioned orchards, using less spray material and less grueling labor.
“The whole apple industry in the United States is switching,” Benny said. “More are adopting the high-density production.”
The Arringtons are the last of the large-scale apple growers in Haywood County, with the closing and phase-out of the Francis, Collins, Boone and Cable family orchards in the past two decades. The next-largest orchard is likely that of Howard and Kathy Taylor, near Murray Branch in east Haywood. KT’s Orchard sits on about 15 acres where, like the Arringtons, the family grows a variety of apples as well as peaches, pears, berries and pumpkins as well as honey and value-added apple products.
The Arringtons take pride in the fact they control their products from their beginnings, “from planting the tree, until the product goes out the door,” Benny said.
And Jane’s college training in elementary education has not been wasted. She takes a break from the interview to hand out paychecks to her young grandchildren — their first. She still loves giving tours for schoolchildren. And when she gets tired, despite being buoyed by constant interactions with customers, she remembers that for her, it will wind down, come January.
“You can do anything for five months,” Jane said.
Barber’s Orchard Fruit Stand, at 2855 Old Balsam Road, is open seven days a week from now until Christmas Eve, except for Thanksgiving. Hours are 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

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