LOVELOCK - After each successful growing season, local apple producer Dr. Bruce Luke sells or donates his products while promoting healthy eating throughout Pershing County.
Last week, Lovelock residents sampled apple varieties not usually available in local stores as Luke offered free samples and tossed free apples at passing students.
Each fall, Luke delivers hundreds of free apples to schools around the county and for athletic teams to eat before or after home and away games.
This week, he'll again be selling apples in downtown Lovelock in the hours before Friday's homecoming football game at Pershing County High School. Look for him and his wife at the corner of Main Street and Cornell Avenue from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Unlike other Pershing County residents, Luke had plenty of apples this year despite a late spring freeze. His 140-tree orchard sits well above the valley floor where colder air layers tend to settle below his Humboldt River Ranch property.
"Down here in the valley, you had a problem with that late freeze," he said. "I'm 800 feet up and so I didn't get that freeze. I'm five to 10 degrees warmer than the valley."
Luke's apple sales and donations include sweet Cameos to tart Granny Smiths plus numerous varieties in between, like Jonagolds, Galas, Red and Golden Delicious, Fuji, Arkansas Blacks, Spartans, Red Romes and Pippins. Bird-damaged fruit is cheap at 20 apples for one dollar. He doesn't mind the birds or the deer nibbling on his trees but coyotes caught stealing apples and breaking branches in the process are shot on sight.
"Jackrabbits are the most destructive of all," he said. "Come winter, if you don't screen the young trees, they chew all the way around the bark and kill the tree. You have to use chicken wire for the first four or five years. After that, when the bark gets tough enough, the jackrabbits don't want it anymore."
This year, Luke said he's also donating apples to pie-makers planning to compete in the upcoming Lovelock Fall Festival. As well as a pie bake-off, there will be other contests and prizes for the most original edible and non-edible apple products, the biggest home-grown vegetables and best fall arrangements, according to event organizer Jana Laird.
Sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and the Relay for Life, the festival will be a first for Lovelock. Next year, Laird said the event is expected to grow into an annual harvest celebration of Pershing County crops and food products, including Dr. Luke's apples, home-grown fruits and vegetables and locally produced alfalfa honey and hay.
The festival will incorporate the fourth annual Growl-O-Ween pets and kids costume contest, craft vendors and music by the Dixie McKay Trio.
Vendors are needed for the event to be held on Saturday, Oct. 26, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Lovelock Depot. For a $10 fee, vendors will receive a three-month seasonal membership in the Pershing County Chamber of Commerce. For more information, call Laird at 273-3707.
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