All’s well that ends well. Especially when homemade apple cakes are served. This month marks a bittersweet first anniversary for Greg Nix, recipient of the 2001 American Fruit GrowerSM Apple Grower of the Year award. On Jan. 31 of last year the Hendersonville, NC, resident watched his packinghouse, Apple Wedge Packers, burn to the ground.
“We lost 100% of everything,” Nix says. “We lost all of our apple bins, all of our packing equipment for apples, all of our cider facility and the equipment for it, all the cold storages. When we got it cleaned up, it was a bare piece of ground.”
The disaster shook Henderson County and its $30 million-a-year apple industry. Terry Kelley, Director of the county Agriculture Extension Service, told the Hendersonville Lightning three days after the fire that 20 to 25 of the county’s 80 to 100 growers had been using Apple Wedge to pack and market their crop. The loss, he said, was a “major setback not only for the Nix family but the entire county.”…