AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Move over, Red Delicious. Gala, Honeycrisp and Fuji apples have become some of the most popular varieties in the U.S. Honeycrisp in particular have achieved apple stardom in produce aisles across the country. But for the farmers who grow these apples, Honeycrisp can be a nightmare.
GEOFF THORNTON: They're like the mean girl at a dance. It's time to be mean to her.
RASCOE: That's Geoff Thornton, a longtime apple farmer in Washington state. His daughter, Kait Thornton, is also in the family business, but she's better known on TikTok as apple.girl.kait. Kait Thornton, welcome to the program.
KAIT THORNTON: Thank you so much.
RASCOE: How do you feel about Honeycrisp apples? Do you really like them?
K THORNTON: I love them just to eat them right off the tree. They're some of my favorites. Some of the organic Honeycrisps that we grow are some of the best that I've ever had. But then, from the grower perspective, the business perspective, they can absolutely kill you 'cause they just store terribly. And so it's not - it doesn't really make sense for our food supply system.
RASCOE: So it's not the growing of the Honeycrisp apples - it's the storing of them that's the issue?
K THORNTON: It's both, really, 'cause there's a lot of input costs upfront. People really like them because they've got this foamy texture, I would say, because of their cell structure. And they've got thin skin, which people really like, versus the Red Delicious has a thicker skin. But...
RASCOE: Yeah.
K THORNTON: It does have more fiber, but it makes it tougher for, first of all, picking the fruit. Bruises easily. We have to clip the stems so they don't puncture each other in the bin. And then for the storage, that cell structure has a lot of issues with calcium deficiencies, and so it develops all these disorders in storage.
RASCOE: Tell me more about the farm that you work on. Like, how long has your family been growing apples?
K THORNTON: Well, it's kind of cool that we're doing this. It's been a hundred years since we started growing fruit in this valley. My great-grandparents started out with some apples and some cattle. And then when my dad got into it - he's third-generation - he kind of had to rebuild the ranch. So he and my mom took it from about 23 acres to now we're over 400 acres, and he started growing pears as well. But one thing about apples is because there's so many varieties, we like to grow as many as possible. We're sitting around 10 different varieties that we grow.
RASCOE: Do you think of apple varieties as having different personalities? Like, if Honeycrisp are the mean girl at the dance, like, what are the others?
K THORNTON: (Laughter) My father and his analogies.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
K THORNTON: Yeah. I mean, I definitely kind of characterize them in my head. I think of the Red Delicious as, like, the old grandfatherly variety versus...
RASCOE: Yeah.
K THORNTON: We're growing some new ones like SugarBee, which is kind of, like, the sweet but, like, very charismatic person. And then we've got Cosmic Crisp, which is a little bit more, like, I'd say, spunky. If you like some of the kind of tart aspects but still like that sweetness, I go Cosmic Crisp. If you like something that's more of a flat sweet, similar to a Fuji, similar to the Honeycrisp, I would say SugarBee. Both of those varieties are half Honeycrisp. And then out of, I think, Michigan, you got the EverCrisp. That's also half Fuji, half Honeycrisp. There's a ton of new varieties, and that's why we always encourage people, like, try different varieties. If you're not eating a bunch of apples, we are certain that we have an apple that fits your ideal flavor profile.
RASCOE: Kait Thornton, fourth-generation apple farmer at Thornton Farms in Washington state. Thank you so much.
K THORNTON: Yes. Thank you.
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RASCOE: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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