Chamber Chat: A fresh perspective with Beasley’s Orchard. Part 2 of 2

Today’s Chamber Chat was full of local flavor as we sat down with Calvin and Brittney Beasley of Beasley’s Orchard! From all things apples to the growing impact of agritourism, this conversation highlighted just how much this family business brings to our community.

We even caught up with Vince, dove into the economic impact Beasley’s has right here in Hendricks County, and got an exciting sneak peek at what’s ahead…

🎉 A brand-new festival is coming in 2026 — and you’ll hear about it here first!

Don’t miss this one — it’s a core sample of what makes our local business community so special.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:08

We hope we'll enjoy the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

So you have done things, I feel like, nationally for ag tourism. You want to talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Yeah, well, we both attended some some different uh conferences. So we're members of the Maze, which is a group um based out of Utah. So they hell they hold annual conferences every year that we've attended several times. Um I'm an active member in IFTA, which is International Fruit Tree Association. So it's um it's a pretty uh technical organization focused on the science of fruit production and industry trends and production methods. Um so I try to attend that conference uh every year. Um I actually took um our production manager Zach with me to Fresno back in February. Um so that was really cool. That was a very different uh environment to see fruit production going on. Usually these conferences are in places like Michigan or New York, more similar to Indiana. Um in California, it's it's a much longer growing season, totally different. Um, and then yeah, we attend other things. I attend the Great Lakes Expo every year, so that's up in um Grand Rapids, Michigan. Um that's a conference that's all about um farm marketing, agritourism, and then production for all of the fruits and vegetables that you could find in the Great Lakes region.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

How do you guys find time to do the conference? I'm worn out scary about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

The lucky or the fortunate thing is that they, and it's by design obviously, they'll happen over the winter mostly. December, January, February, March, um, when all the growers are not off because we're never really off, but they're it's slowed way down. Um, so we have more time to do a lot of the things. We we prune all winter long, um, we do equipment maintenance and stuff all winter long, and our retail market's open, but it's less demanding in the number of hours per day or um hours per week. So we do have an opportunity to go do those things. And luckily, we have a good management staff who um we trust to run the market and run the outside operations while we go to those things.

SPEAKER_00 2:21

So and all the all the stuff like I was, you know, we were talking about the high density apple production, and then I think you saw some of the mechanization and stuff when you were out here. None of that would have happened had I not gone on these tours. It's like all all of that education comes from these conferences. I mean, I don't think I would have picked any of it up if I hadn't gone to that stuff. So I I knew it as being like critically necessary to it's just like I mean when she was in um physical therapy, they have to do continuing ed all the time. And I think it's the same, the same concept, really.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

No, absolutely, absolutely. I think it's I think it's imperative, but I think um it's interesting because I know locally, I feel like people look to you guys um to see what you guys are doing and and how you're doing it. So it's interesting um that you guys get to go and learn from others. If you were to say, so we're talking about the market. Um so the market, you guys provide things yourselves, but how do you pick and choose what you guys bring into the market and how is that like determined? Yes, this is good enough, or how do you guys decide?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah, well, a lot of honestly, a lot of the products that we carry now um were carried when Debbie ran the market and she was a retail buyer. Um she attended a lot of like retail conferences and things like that. Um, a lot of the things you go to have um like vendor markets that you can go and sample their products. We go to the farm machinery show in Louisville and they have a whole craft and food area. So you can sample things and see, you know, is this quality? Is it something that we think we should carry? Um we try to carry a lot of local vendors, um, not just in Hendricks County, but Indiana, Indianapolis in general. Um, we like to carry things where their um values align with ours, you know, or things that we like to support. Um, animals are a big one, but in general, um other farms and things like that. Um, and then there are like webinars and stuff that I watch too that I that I tune into about market trends, um, what is popular right now, what used to be popular and what's kind of falling off, and um, so things like that. So there's a lot of resources which are is nice for kind of we we talk to other farms, we talk to other businesses similar to ours, retail markets like ours. Sometimes we go places and we'll say, Oh, this product is cool. We should see if they wholesale, and then you know, and and we ask them and they do, or um, it's something that you can work with. So it's kind of like individual taste, um, quality, values. Quality's the biggest one. Quality is the biggest one. Um, and we like to work locally as much as we can. So yeah, but um, I'm always open to new products and I'm always kind of switching things out, trying new things, um, especially as we get busier. Um, and then we we obviously do research on like the last what I do most of the winter is look at last year's sales and see, you know, these products did really well at these times, or they did well year-round. Um, that's something we want to continue to carry, or this kind of fell off. Why it did lose popularity, or you know, so just kind of studying that stuff and and making decisions going forward, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

And then you make choices on the produce that comes in the market. How do you how do you I mean I would be are you really picky about what you bring into your farm to sell?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Yeah, absolutely. And we were just talking the other night about like some of my earliest memories are going to the old Italian produce markets with my dad as a little kid. He used to bring me in, we'd go to Krispy Kreme on the way and then go buy produce. So I I've been looking at cases of various produce for about as long as I can remember. I've been listening to grown men argue about the price and quality of the produce for as long as I can remember, and so I was getting educated in that before I even realized it. Um we have a lot of farms that we source the same product from year after year, so that's a huge part of it. It's just consistency. Our peaches are the biggest one. Yeah, the peaches come from the same farm in South Carolina every year. Most of them, sometimes we supplement from other places, um, but they're all coming from the same region of South Carolina generally. Um and we know what we're getting from them. Um we know what varieties they grow, we know when they're gonna be ready. And you know, we sort of have that type of network for a lot of the crops that we're bringing in. Um and so we have the same people that we work with. Um I know that they're gonna take care of us. That's the big thing in the produce, it's like it's in the produce industry. It's really easy to stack a pallet and put the good stuff on top and the bad stuff on the bottom.

unknown 6:44

And it happens a lot.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

And you know, you go, um, you'll be in a living dock, and you'll look at a pallet of tomatoes, and you'll look at the top boxes and you think these look great. Put them on your truck, you get somewhere and you start unstacking them, and you realize that you know the bottom half is older or lower quality. So working with people you trust that take care of you is a huge, uh, huge benefit for us.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

And a lot of the people that we work with also buy stuff from us. So it's a it's a two-way trusting relationship that will give them good quality. We we wholesale tomatoes, pumpkins, melons, um, strawberries, a lot of squash, things like that, and a lot of sweet corn. And so when we bring things in and they're bringing stuff to us and they're taking stuff from us, they know that that relationship, it's a mutual trust and a and a we know that the quality is gonna be there. And they work with us really well when it's not. If something is wrong, they're their understanding, and vice versa. So it's good to have those relationships established with people that we trust, farms that we trust.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

And there are times, I mean, if if we can't get something that's gonna be good enough, we just won't we'll go with that. Okay. You know, we're not like a grocery store where it's like, oh my gosh, we have to have this product. I mean, and it does happen sometimes. And in this year, with the weather they had in the southern US with the freezes and everything, there's probably going to be some inconsistencies in the supply chain. Um, and if we can't find something that is good enough to put in the market, we're just not gonna have it.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

You said right now tomatoes are affected, um, and then I think you said you think your peaches might be affected a bit, correct?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Yeah, the tomato market's pretty erratic right now. Tomatoes are very high and then they're very hard to come by. Um, and that's just due. Florida had a lot of really um exceptionally cold weather for them. Um so they had a lot of plantings that that just are not gonna mature. And then kind of the same thing with peaches. Um, some of the southern peach districts were already out of dormancy when that weather came through, so they lost their crop. I think that we're gonna be able to source peaches um pretty reliably, but I I do believe that they'll be more expensive just because of the peach market as a whole. So, and that's typically how anything, any fruit or vegetable, that they're still treated like a commodity, so just like soybean or corn, um, when there's less of it on the marketplace, you're gonna see prices go up. But I do think that we'll still be able to get the same high-quality peaches that we're used to.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Okay, and we grow tomatoes, so once our tomatoes come in, the concern is everything that's gone, hopefully. Um, but until then when we're talking them in from Florida and then Tennessee and then Kentucky before ours are ready, that's where you'll have some of the consistencies.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

We only sourced Florida tomatoes until um usually mid to late May. Okay. And then we'll switch over to to Georgia or Tennessee, and I think things will be more um normal on their own. Yeah, which obviously we still have high fuel prices, input prices are high. So I think things are gonna be um a little high, higher than last year, but it shouldn't be anything too out of the ordinary.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

That that was my next question is that how is you know kind of the economic impact right now on you guys as the farm in general, but what you're forecasting for this year and cost.

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, we're I mean, I think right now, so 2022 is a really expensive year in terms of inputs for us, and and we're you know, 23 and 24 were more, or sorry, 23, 24, 25 were more normal. Um, and right now we're more up around that 22 level. So we're seeing obviously high diesel prices, which you know, everybody who drives is seeing that. But the other effect that that has on us is like you know, fertilizer is more expensive, and then the trucking for fertilizers are more expensive. Um, the trucking for you know pesticides is going up. So, you know, every bill that we get, it's kind of like ooh, like that's that's that's higher than it was. Yeah, like significantly higher than it was. Um so that it is going to affect things. Um you know, labor increases almost every year as well. So it's it's just kind of if you're in an ag, uh, this is how the last five or six years have gone. And and we're we're kind of used to it. Um we just try to we try to raise our prices in a in a reasonable manner when we have to.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

You guys hire a lot of seasonal help. Um, so when do you guys start doing that? Because I know high school and college kids love to come home and work for you guys.

SPEAKER_01 10:53

Yeah, we're starting now. Okay. Um so we attended the Danville High School has a career fair every year, and that's always sort of our kickoff for getting applications in and starting to interview and hire. So um that's how I spent my whole morning, actually. I was calling all the applicants and scheduling in-person interviews for next week. Um, so we start hiring those people like late April, early May, um, and then they stay on typically if they're a high school or college student, they'll stay on through the fall season, um, especially like for the weekends. The fall festival weekends are really busy. So a lot of students work just the weekends. Um, but we have maybe people of all ages apply, people of all ages that work here. Um, but yeah, we're we're starting now. So our applications are online and available, and I'm calling them, so apply.

SPEAKER_02 11:37

Um if you had to pick one apple.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 11:41

I am asking. I know my mom.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I'm trying to eat them all. But and sometimes multiple a day. Like he sees testing, like, yeah, are they ready to be picked? Are they not ready to be picked? You know, what's the flavor profile right now? I'm gonna be like, I'm not even hungry for dinner. I ate six apples and I'm like calm down and he has to drop them, so I know it does.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

I'll try to remind myself just to like take a whole bit so that I'm eating the whole thing, which is I guess a good sign. Yeah. Um, well, the first so I get asked this a lot, okay, but there's a caveat. Okay. So I can't just answer it in terms of what is the best to eat because I have to live with these trees 365 days a year. Yeah. So I have to, you know, they have like they have personalities basically. They have growth habits. Some of them are are great, they're easy, you know, it's like they don't give you any problems, and then some of them are are nightmares. They get sick, they don't grow right. So I have to I have to judge them based on the whole picture. Um, but I think I think right now the one that excites me the most is probably Pixie Crunch. Um, I love that apple. It's it's I like it's a small apple, so it's perfect for like an on-the-go snack, you know. You can eat it in like five or six bites, it's not like a meal. Um and it's really easy to grow treat, which I won't go into all of that stuff. Okay. Um, I also really, really like Crimson Crisp and Gold Rush.

unknown 13:07

So those are kind of the three that I would say are my top three.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

I also think that though, like if I had to go start from scratch and like grow five acres of apples only for UPIC, it might be those three. Um, Honey Crisp is obviously the a very popular apple. Um as a grower, it it's terrible. It's a really, really difficult tree. It's very hard to grow. It has a lot of problems. It's very binding.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

It's probably your family's favorite, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

It's everybody's favorite. That's what everybody's I knew I'm like. I knew it.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I love I love selling honey crisp. Love selling them. You know, when once you get them in the bin, you get them in the cooler, they're great to sell because obviously um they're gonna be a good thing. They sell them price.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

People love them too, so that people know them. But we know we have a lot of honey crisp cross-like derivatives, yeah. Ludacrisp, ever crisp, crisis crisp.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Crimson crisp is not, it's not a honey crisp.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

There's another one. Does Texa Crunch have honey crisp in it?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Um, no.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Anyway, there's a couple crosses that have honey crisp in them. So that's another thing that we try to educate on. Like we have Evercrisp right now, they keep at our cooler for six to eight months. So we can pick them in November, late October, and keep them through now, you know. So if you're looking for honey crisp, they're not, they don't keep very long, and they're they also get worse when they're in storage and they're just problematic. Yeah, but if you want something that's got a honey crisp parent, Evercrisp is a good option. It's a better apple. It's a better apple. Yeah, it is, it's better. I would agree.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

So now, do you I mean because you were talking about how you cross breeding?

SPEAKER_00 14:39

Do you think we don't hear? No, we don't do it. We don't propagate. We don't, yeah, we don't propagate any trees. We don't even graft any trees, um, which surprises some people. Um, but that's just not like again, back to the high density thing, 1200 trees per acre. If you're planting four or five acres a year, it's a lot of grafts to make. Yeah. And then if we're grafting trees, we're liable if the graft fails. If you buy them from a nursery, that tree dies, they're financially liable for it. So there's a lot of reasons to go through a nursery, but and and there's some really good um apple breeding programs out there right now that are you know doing they'll do 10,000, 20,000 crosses a year. And of like say you do 20,000, there might be like six that are worthy of continuing evaluation on. So it's a pretty low success rate, but there's some groups that are doing really good work.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

Which apple do you guys use to make your pies?

SPEAKER_00 15:27

These blend, yeah, it depends on the time of the year, but usually um, like John, a lot of Jonathan go in, uh, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

You want some sweet and some tart. Yeah. Yeah. You want a good balance of the two.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

So that that blend is pretty common. Um, but different times of the year they'll use different things. Same thing for cider. Like it depends on when we're making the cider, what apples go into it.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Um, when can you get cider? Year year-round. I know my husband told me on the way here. Uh, you're gonna give me some cider, right?

SPEAKER_01 15:57

If you're going out cider, you're gonna give you some cider. Yes. Same with apple cider slushies. They're available year-round. And hard cider. People don't realize, but yeah, and hard cider.

SPEAKER_02 16:08

It I love the strawberry.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

I don't like beer at all. I don't either. I like the strawberry hard cider. That one I really like. Yes, and the strawberry hard cider is just our strawberries and our apples. There's nothing else added to it, but it's naturally a little bit sweeter than the original hard apple cider because it has the sugar from the strawberries in it. So that's also the one I prefer too. But the the hard apple cider is also really popular, it's just a staple. Um, but it's a little more like semi-sweet. So if you're more like a sweet, because I'm not a beer drinker either. So if it's more like a sweet hint in there, I'm like, that's my sweet spot. So there you go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:41

And strawberry hard cider just got started today. So the the process to ferment it just got started today.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

There we go. It'll be your first strawberry season. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 16:50

And then for a little while after, but yeah. Um, you guys rent, do you guys still rent out the loft for events? Yeah. And how many does that hold?

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Um, I think the capacity is maybe what's on our website, maybe a hundred.

SPEAKER_03 17:04

Yeah, maybe a little less. Maybe.

SPEAKER_01 17:07

Um, but yeah, it's available May through August, um, any day of the week. Weekend days are the most popular, but we have people renting it now for events. All we do graduation open houses, um baby showers, bridal showers. Um, people host events up there kind of all summer long. So um, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a rustic venue, it's um it's sweet, and uh a lot of people come up and see it, and they're like, Oh, this is perfect. It's casual enough, but it's you know, good space, and um, it is a barn. It's there's no AC up there. So in the summer it's hot, but we open those windows and you get the natural light in, and it's really pretty, and um, it's a really fun place to have a to have an event. So it's a beautiful bar. And and I think people just love coming on. I mean, I yeah. Something about driving down the lane makes you just like, huh, yes, I'm in some open space for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 17:55

So all right. One last question, uh, or is there anything else you guys wanted to talk about that I didn't hit on? When is registration closed for the run?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

So the the registration is open until the day before the race. Okay. Um, the registration to include a t-shirt with your registration has closed. Okay. Um, because we have to place that order and get everybody's sizes and stuff. So we're ordering those today actually. Um but you can still register up until the day before the race, which is the race is on the 25th of April, so the the 24th is when the last day to register. Okay. And we will have shirts available for sale, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

All right, last question. One piece of life advice or something that you live by, or you like that's the one thing advice that you would give to someone.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

This is a good question for you. He's much more of an optimist than I am. So he'll have some positive advice.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Well, and so the other thing is uh like she's very type A, which I love her for, super organized, she's a big planner, but and I and planning's very important in any business, but I have learned over the years to be flexible with the planning. Um just for so many different reasons, but that's always like anytime a young, like a younger entrepreneur asks me about advice or anything, I always say, like, have a plan, do your homework, know have as much knowledge as you possibly can. But don't, when you're going to try something, don't have it be like all my chips are on the table for this try. Because it's probably not gonna go the way that you envision it. Um, and envisioning things is very important, you know, like you need to have an idea of what you want the outcome to be, but the process sometimes gets gets messy and gets changed a lot. So that's that's a big part of how we do new things on the farm. Like we have an idea, but we we go very carefully into it the first time because if you have like this ironclad plan that you've worked on and you've trained your whole team on, and then five minutes in the whole thing falls apart for some unforeseen reason, um, it can be very painful and frustrating. So I just like flexibility, I think, is the thing. Flexible plans, yeah. Flexible plans. Yeah, which doesn't mean don't do your homework. Research and knowledge are the most important things because they also allow you to adapt quickly when things do go wrong.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

You get to depend on the weather a lot. And and the Yama, that's always fun. So flexible plans. Flexible plans.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Yes. Flexible plans. All right, what do you have? What you got? Oh man. I guess mine would be, and maybe this is something that I'm still kind of working on, is um is prioritize um prioritize like problem solving, I guess. So what's the most important thing to address? What matters the most? Um, and kind of put other things that maybe are less important or um things that will impact you less toward the bottom of the of the importance list. Um I am easily stressed, so um, sometimes there are things that are so small that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things that I get hung up on. And so I'm trying to do better implementing that. But I think that's a really good way to approach operating a business, but also like in life, just is this really affecting me and my day-to-day, or is this something that I'm holding on to for you know no reason? So kind of prioritizing addressing issues or solving problems, and what's what's that should be at the top of your list, what's the most important, and then working your way down. So yeah, compartmentalizing. Yeah, those are both great ones, impressive. I think things that volunteer will deal with. I mean, I think there's a lot of kind of in your day-to-day, but also in business. Definitely.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Thank you guys both. So much I wonder how to do an apple tasting. Absolutely. Do you guys do apple tastings? I think we should do tasting.

SPEAKER_01 21:47

We should do one. Okay, I mean we haven't done one before, but we will do one for you.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

I think it'd be fun to like really figure out because you know, once we found Empire, that's what I buy. Yeah. And then, you know, now it's kind of like, well. Okay, can't get honey crisp, what can I get?

SPEAKER_01 22:02

You know, so um well he has such descriptions like of every apple, like, well, you know, this one has this flavor, and can't you tell the difference between these five? And if I eat one one week and I eat one the next week, it's really hard for me to tell the difference. But if I sit down and eat a bite of four or five different apples, then you're like, Oh, those do taste pretty different. Because a lot of times for people, they're like an apple's an apple, right? Yeah, but then if you try it's not, obviously, we know that. But a lot of general the general public doesn't think they're that different. So, but if you do a tasting and you eat them one after another, I think you'd be surprised by the differences. So we should do that. That would be fun. I think that would be a lot of fun. I think we'll plan it. I'll right.

SPEAKER_02 22:40

Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you.