About the Orchard

Located in the hills above the village of Putney, Green Mountain Orchards is one of Vermont’s largest apple orchards. Four generations of the Darrow family have farmed these hills. We grow primarily apples and blueberries for the wholesale market, with over 125 acres of apples in production and nearly 18 acres of blueberries — plus raspberries, peaches, pears, plums, pumpkins, and Christmas trees.

History

Green Mountain Orchards was started in 1914 by William H. Darrow Sr., who was born and raised in Chester, VT. He purchased a small hillside farm in Putney and began planting apples and other horticultural crops immediately. Today the orchard is managed by the third and fourth generations of Darrows.

We grew in production and acreage over the next 75 years, until the 1990s, when the apple market tumbled and many New England orchards went out of business. Green Mountain Orchards cut its acreage by nearly half in the late ’90s as a result. Efficient management and the development of a retail and pick-your-own business has allowed us to stick around — hopefully for another 100 years.

Bakery & Kitchen

The orchard kitchen is known far and wide for its sinfully delicious pies and cider donuts. On fall days the donuts are still fresh no matter what time you arrive — and some days we can’t make them as fast as they’re eaten.

Many other goodies come out of our kitchen, including scones, muffins, blueberry buckle, and apple sticky buns. Our store is also stocked with our own jams and butters, alongside quality products from our fellow Vermont neighbors.

Cider Press

We press our own fresh cider at the orchard, using only high-quality, tree-picked fruit — so there’s no need to pasteurize it. State law prohibits orchards from selling unpasteurized cider in stores, which means you can only get our fresh cider in one place: directly from the people who make it.

We start pressing in early September as the apples get sweet, and in a good year we keep going deep into the winter.

Growing Practices

Although we would like to grow our apples organically, the moist, humid, hot conditions of New England are a perfect habitat for orchard pests and diseases, making it very difficult to grow marketable fruit organically. So at our orchard we practice Integrated Pest Management, or IPM.

IPM is an effective and environmentally sensitive approach that relies on a combination of common-sense practices: monitoring crops for damage, mechanical trapping, natural predators, mating disruption, and — only when necessary — the judicious use of pesticides. It uses current, comprehensive information on pest life cycles to manage damage by the most economical means, with the least possible hazard to people, property, and the environment. Most of our fruit is grown this way, and one field of our blueberries is organic.