"They picked us," says Mark Grimes, who runs Homestead Arts Farm in Pine Island with his wife, Lori Grimes, welcoming people to learn about their fuzzy friends.
When Jay Clark and Tammy Soma Clark began Rochester's Apples R Us in 2009 they only had 300 trees planted, now in 2022, they have over 12,500 with plans to plant a third orchard section by 2024.
“In the initial years, we felt kind of embarrassed that we were the ones to take that leap," said Veronica Gaidelis-Langer, owner of Sweet Land Farm. "I am so proud of how far we’ve come and how much we’ve learned.”
As kids, we spent many summers bumping along the dirt roads in Dad’s pickup as he patrolled creeks and ditches — ever vigilant to any splash of yellow representing leafy spurge. He would screech to a halt and we'd trot to the back of the truck to pull out hoses so we could douse every offending patch with herbicide. These days, we are more prone to limping than trotting. But we're still spraying spurge, Tammy Swift says.
