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By Mary Ann Kuhn
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Like his father, and his grandfather and his greatfather, Bryant Lee is determined to hold on to the rows upon rows of apple trees that make up his scenic 85-acre apple orchard near Massies Comer.
“My father used to call this ‘God’s country’ when he came up here,” said Lee one recent sunny morning on top of a crest in his orchard in Washington where he and his uncle Jim Lee farm together. It was Jim Lee and Bryant Lee’s late father, Thomas, who established this particular orchard which has every apple variety from A to Z.
Standing there with a spring wind blowing the blossoms off the trees like snowflakes, the beauty of the moment masks the fact that these are tough times for apple growers.
It is a time when Virginia’s once-thriving apple industry is fading. Lee and other apple growers who farm the 385 acres of apple orchards in Rappahannock, are seeking assistance from the federal government to continue what generations before them started.
Lee and Kenner Love of the Virginia Cooperative Extension office in Rappahannock County drove to Washington, D.C. for a hearing on March 2 on their petition to the U. S. Department of Agriculture for trade adjustment assistance to help ease the strain lower apple prices have put on them. The Rappahannock petition was filed on behalf of all apple growers in Virginia.
With Lee and Love were two other Rappahannock apple growers: Eddie Williams of Williams’ Orchard and Jonathan Moore, grandson of Louis Moore of Moore’s
See APPLES, Page A6
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