WOOSTER, Ohio – They have everything but pineapples at Moreland Fruit Farm, Emmanuel Miller likes to say. In reality, the greenhouse leads the season with bedding and vegetable plants, hanging baskets, early tomatoes and more. Next come the strawberries, followed by something U-Pick from the last of May until the last of October.

Miller and his wife, Barbara, bought the 92-acre farm in 2018. His brother, Andy, is also involved in the operation. Moreland has been a fruit farm for 91 years. It produces apples, peaches, plums, blueberries, black, red and yellow raspberries, strawberries and elderberries. They also have sweet corn, pumpkins and fall decor, including about 10,000 mums. They have multiple festivals.

They start the tomato plants from seed around New Year’s Day, move them to the high tunnel about May 15 and will have ripe tomatoes by the end of May, Andy Miller said. 

“Our biggest market is probably strawberries,” Emmanuel Miller said.  “We tried to prime the pump to have peaches as one of our biggest markets. We put out 1,000 trees. Unfortunately, this year we have hardly any peaches. We have been here since 2018; this is the first year we have had virtually no peaches. This will go down as one of the toughest springs on record for fruit farms because of the weather ups and downs.”

The 80-degree days in March and April pushed the buds to swell, and then the temperature plummeted into the teens, Miller said. That was hard on the peaches and blackberries. However, the Millers are expecting a bumper crop of apples.

This year, the frost killed the king blossoms, Miller said. The king blossom opens first and is the primary target for early pollination. Because it develops first, it typically grows into the largest, highest-quality apple in the cluster. That is the one they harvest.

Usually, when the king blossom reaches about thumbnail size, they apply a thinning spray, which kills off the smaller apples around the main blossom. Normally, there are 10 times more apples than they want on a tree.

“These little guys that were around the edges will take over for the king blossom, but I can’t have five apples for one cluster,” Miller said. “If I use the thinning spray too early, I will knock them all off. I can’t do that. Because I have no peaches, I can’t afford to lose all of my apples. We might have to hand-prune some.

“One nice thing about peaches, or farming in general, if I have no peach crop this year, it is all good,” he explained. “I was not in control of the weather. The good Lord decides what we want to do. We do our best, and it’s all we can do. But, if you have no crop because you made a mistake, that is a hard pill to swallow.”

It takes three years to get a peach crop from newly planted trees. This was to be the first crop from those 1,000 peach trees. Yet Miller is grateful he will have a small crop. Their only day for U-Pick peaches will be Aug. 8.

The farm will soon be replacing its apple trees. Currently the varieties are all mixed together. 

“Back in the day, it wasn’t as critical as it is right now,” Miller said. “In this day and age, time is money. If all these varieties of apples are mixed together, I have to pick some of the same apples from different rows.”

Also, the people who come for U-Pick want a specific variety, and they need to know where to find it. Plus, apple varieties have changed, Miller said. People want the newer varieties such as Ever Crisp, Honey Crisp, Snap Dragon and Pixie Crisp.

Another change is that people want healthy fruit, Miller said. So, they spray the least amount possible. They are trying to use more environmentally friendly farming practices. Frank Becker, Ohio State University Extension agriculture and natural resources educator, has insect traps throughout the farm, which he checks weekly. If they don’t have to spray, they don’t.

They are using more biologicals, plus there are five martin houses on the farm. Miller thinks those martins reduce insect pressure in the orchards.

Many changes are happening on the farm, which was started in 1935 by Harry Young, an Ohio State plant pathologist. Miller said he takes it one day at a time and loves the challenge.