PARADISE — For a town severely battered by the Camp Fire nearly five years ago, preserving a link to its agricultural heritage provides a good foundation for recovery.Johnny Appleseed Days, which started as the Paradise Harvest Festival in 1888 evolved into the Paradise Fair in 1912, is the oldest harvest festival in California. Once a prominent apple-growing region, the Paradise ridge now has just Noble Orchards and its 18 acres of apple trees as its last major producer.Heinke’s Farm and Nursery has two acres of production. Other than those, commercial operations have vanished from the area. Johnny Appleseed Days, however, keeps the link to the past while offering the community live entertainment, food vendors and artisans as well as local organizations’ information booths.The two-day festival at Terry Ashe Park began Saturday and returns for a 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. run today. There’s no charge to attend.Jim and Laurie Noble operate Noble Orchards at 7050 Pentz Rd. and, as co-sponsors for the event, displayed their tempting Gala and Granny Smith apples on a large table inside the park’s pavilion. Jim’s grandfather started the operation in 1921, after the Paradise Irrigation District (founded in 1916-18) provided water that made large-scale farming feasible. The family farm grew to 45 acres; three generations have run the business.However, technological improvements — such as “controlled-atmosphere” storage that removed oxygen from the harvested apples, thus preserving them, in the 1960s — spelled doom for many of the Paradise ridge farms that were seasonal operations.Plus, water delivery systems in Washington state and Oregon gave life to significant amounts of production land in those states.”There wasn’t enough land up here,” Jim Noble said.Laurie Noble added that, at the industry’s peak, “there were 40 to 80 orchards on the ridge.” Noble Orchards, she explained, “shipped apples to South America — though that didn’t last long.”The orchard is now focused on selling locally, such as at the Chico Farmers Market since the early 1980s, and as a “u-pick” operation where customers harvest their own apples and pay based on weight.The 2018 fire “made a huge difference in daily sales,” Laurie Noble said. “It’s a challenge, to say the least,” with fewer locals living in the area to purchase the tasty fruit. The fire also destroyed the cold storage facility and packing house on the property.Jim Noble said his operation now is a “direct marketing” business and is not easy to run.”There’s not a lot of help available,” he said, “and I’m not getting any younger.”<h4>Variety on display</h4>Nonetheless, the business was brisk for the Nobles on Saturday as a steady stream of customers and curious onlookers stopped to make purchases, or at least to sample the fruit.Employees Crystal Harmon and Declan Dutro were having a good-natured disagreement about which was better — Gibson Gold (Harmon’s choice) or Golden Delicious (Dutro’s preference). They asked a third party to taste both types and then settle the “dispute”; a vote for Gibson Gold gave that variety a narrow edge.Not far away, Heinke’s maintained a booth, showcasing a variety of products, including fresh apple juice and Eastern Concord table grapes. Commercial harvesting is complete for this year’s grape crop, according to co-owner Terran Heinke, but “u-pick” customers can visit the farm at 5365 Clark Rd. on Friday and Saturday over the next two weekends to harvest grapes that remain on the vines.Heinke said the grapes need to get off the vines soon, as they’re at 22% sugar and have attracted the attention of deer and birds.Heinke’s opened in 1925, making it only slightly younger than Noble, but Heinke’s has just a 17-acre property including two acres dedicated to apples — “with a little more variety,” Heinke said.Lori Phelps-Zink of Magalia and Jennifer Petersen, both board members on the Paradise Community Guild, said their group seeks to expand the festival next year with more “show what you grow” displays and perhaps a “giant pumpkin” competition. A display table invited people to show off their home-grown flowers and pumpkins; attendees could vote for the ones they liked best.One thing the younger attendees liked Saturday was the pumpkin race, in which entrants placed small pumpkins on their heads and “race-walked” about 100 feet along a designated track. The first to cross the line without having the pumpkin slide off was declared the winner.Ires Savage, an eighth-grader from Paradise, won the day’s final race with a solid strategy of keeping his body stiff as he walked rapidly but carefully to absorb each step’s shock. This year’s Johnny Appleseed Days was his first.What did he do during his visit? “Basically everything,” he said, listing several competitions he entered and activities he enjoyed.Outside the park, Zeke Lipe was busy creating inflated balloon sculptures, and whatever money he collected, he pledged to send to the August victims of the Lahaina fire in Hawaii.Lipe also operates “Rainbow’s End” at 7655 Skyway and seeks musicians to play there. “Having people playing music will help bring back the life to Paradise,” he said.And finally, what celebration honoring apples would be complete with the most American of desserts — apple pie? Well, the festival offered that as well, in the Save Mart Apple Pie Pavilion at the Terry Ashe Recreation Center.California Conservation Corps firefighters Alexander Gardner and Ethan Briere served eager visitors plates of apple pie with two scoops of vanilla ice cream on each. Both are based at the CCC’s Magalia Center; they’ve worked five fires this summer as members of hand crews, specializing in using Pulaskis — devices that combine an ax on one side the head with an adze at the other. It’s effective for building fire lines, allowing the user to cut wood and dig soil with a single tool.

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Johnny Appleseed Days maintains its connection to the past – Paradise Post

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