Cooperative Extension agents (left to right) Ashley Hoppers, Josh Fuder and Clark MacAllister plant one of the Heritage Orchard’s trees. They located many of the orchard’s varieties through their contacts with local apple growers and other farmers and tree owners.

The Heritage Orchard’s baby trees grew for almost a year inside an electrified enclosure to protect them from hungry deer. In March 2020—just before the world went into lockdown due to COVID-19—a group of researchers, extension agents and volunteers had grafted the rare varieties onto a root stock that will produce trees of just the right size and vigor.