Growing up I used to go to Fifer’s all the time. My dad and I would stop by the orchard to get apples for our horses, or to ruin our dinner by getting Fifer’s incredible apple cider doughnuts. Once August rolled around my family and I would all go up to Fifer’s for the peach festival and snag ourselves some peach ice cream and have fun in the corn mazes. Before touring the orchard with the AGRI130 class I had assumed that they only grew peaches, apples and pumpkins, as that is what I mainly saw every time I went. However, Fifer’s grows far more than that. Some of their most profitable crops as a whole include sweet corn, pumpkins, peaches and asparagus. If you go by most profitable crops per acre, however, it would be tomatoes and strawberries. This is all grown on about 3000 acres of land. Most of the products grown by Fifer’s orchard goes to grocery stores within the Mid Atlantic region. While most products stay in that area, they actually ship to almost everywhere east of the Mississippi from Maine on down to Florida. While it is not uncommon for them to ship west of the Mississippi, it is more expensive to do so. 

Overall I was amazed at the size of the operation because growing up I was always under the impression that Fifer’s was not as big as it actually is. I feel privileged that I was able to take a tour of the farm and want to thank Mr. Fifer for allowing me to see behind the scenes of an operation that is such a staple of my childhood.