By Chris Aldridge

Kentucky Ag News

It’s u-pick apple season at two central Kentucky orchards that are just three miles apart between Cynthiana and Paris. It’s also agritourism time at Stepping Stone Farm and Reed Valley Orchard, which are now owned by the same family.

Stepping Stone’s three co-owner/operators – Brandon and Hannah Barnett, and Brandon’s sister, Ally Vallandingham – bought Reed Valley from Dana and Trudie Reed when the couple retired five years ago. It was an opportunity the trio couldn't resist. 

“My crazy husband was like, ‘Oh, we could do this!’” Hannah said.

Stepping Stone, a 350-acre former cattle farm, was transformed into a u-pick orchard similar to Reed Valley. Stepping Stone has about 7,000 apple trees, with 5,000 to 6,000 more at Reed Valley.

“Our apples look really good,” Hannah said. “We had a bumper crop of everything this year…. This year, we got a ton of rain that helped size up the apples. We have very large and luscious apples, which is great for us.”

Of the 40 varieties of apples at Stepping Stone, the best seller is Gold Rush.

“It’s an all-purpose apple, good for eating and baking,” Hannah said. “It can stay in cold storage for 12 months. That’s what we do all winter. We make our apple pie filling.”

Stepping Stone just fulfilled a contract with What Chefs Want to buy 1,400 bushels. “That’s a lot of apples!” Hannah said, noting they are destined for the school lunch plates of students in Lexington.

September is agritourism month, and Stepping Stone’s agritourism activities will kick into high gear as the weather cools. There will be a pumpkin patch, a corn maze that transforms into a haunted corn maze right before Halloween, a petting zoo, and a playground.

“U-pick goes on as long as we have apples on the trees, sometimes into November,” Hannah said.

Stepping Stone doesn’t hold a fall festival because “our fall festival happens every weekend,” Hannah noted. The farm’s final event of the year is its “Stepping Into the Fall Festival” on Saturday, Oct. 24.

 “It’s your first-chance-to-start-holiday-shopping event with local vendors,” Hannah said. “It’s our last hurrah before we close for the season.”

Fall is only eclipsed by spring as the busiest time of the year at Stepping Stone.

“We’re a u-pick orchard that starts with strawberries and ends strong with apples, with peaches, pears, blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries in between,” Hannah said. Stepping Stone is home of the two-day Kentucky Strawberry Festival, which had its fourth annual event in May. In addition to u-pick strawberries, there was live music, hard cider and cocktails, food trucks, boutique vendors, a Miss Strawberry Festival Pageant, and a strawberry jam competition.

“The whole state of Kentucky must love strawberries because they all showed up on that weekend!” Hannan said, noting the farm grew nearly 3 million strawberries on five acres. “We had strawberries coming out our ears!”

Stepping Stone, an eighth-generation farm that has been in operation since 1790, began transitioning away from cattle with a patch of sunflowers that were planted to attract doves for hunting. But the flowers became a popular destination for hundreds of people, particularly photographers looking for a colorful background for their subjects.

After expanding into u-pick, Stepping Stone’s latest addition is an event venue called The Orchard Grove, which opened in June. It can accommodate 200-230 guests for indoor and outdoor gatherings, such as weddings, reunions, showers, and birthday parties. “We even had a Celebration of Life (funeral) here,” Hannah noted.

Hannah’s sister-in-law, Ally, says the goal of the entire operation goes deeper selling fresh fruit for profit.

“A big passion of ours is showcasing how (local fruits) get from the soil all the way to your plate,” Ally said. “We really wanted that u-pick experience for our customers to really understand where their food is coming from. I believe there's a great divide between the plate and the farmer now.”

Ally said the number of American farms is decreasing by an average of 15,000 per year. 

“You know, it used to be where you knew a farmer … at least one,” she said. “We are losing more and more family farms every day. So, I really wanted that experience of our customers being able to go out and see exactly what a blueberry bush looks like or understand how to pick a peach, know when they when they go to (a store) to understand just exactly where those fruits came from.”

Stepping Stone is located at 1674 Cynthiana Road near Paris, while Reed Valley’s address is 239 Lail Lane near Paris.