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Passion for fruits, nuts and vegetables leads to a growing business

Just because we don’t live in California doesn’t mean we don’t have nuts. And just because we don’t live in Washington doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy fresh, locally-produced apples when October rolls around.

Edwin and Pat Choquette grow nine varieties of eating and cooking apples in their orchard 22 miles south of Minden. Varieties include: Arkansas Black Beauty, Honey Crisp, Delicious, Jonagold, Braeburn, Gala, Fuji, Jonagold, and Jonafree.

But for the Choquettes, apples are only the beginning.

Visiting the Choquette gardens is like stepping into a magical micro-world where light, dark, soft, warm, and cool greens shimmer and blend into pools of leaves. The thriving trees and plants tell how a passion for cultivating fruits, nuts and vegetables, in rich soil, by a grower who is both scientist and artist, can turn into a profitable family business. As we walk through this idyll, Choquette calls the names of nut, apple, peach, plum and pear trees, myriad vegetables and rows of sweet corn including one named “You Just Have to Have This”.

A fruitful lesson.

Choquette recalled his beginnings as a gardener.

“My gardening career started under something of a black cloud. When I was 8 or 9 years old, I begged my parents to have a garden. I got a Henry Field catalogue, picked out all the seeds I wanted for my garden, and it all added up to $4.75.

“My folks said that was too much money and I was too young to take care of a garden. So without telling them, I ordered the seeds by taking one of my mother’s checks and signing her name. The seeds arrived from Fields Catalogue, but the bank manager noticed the discrepancy in the check signature. He called my mother and me in and told me I’d done wrong. Yes, I planted my first garden, and I paid back the $4.75, but I learned my lesson.”

Apple pie perfect.

The apple pie part of the Choquette’s business got started the year they grew so many apples that they didn’t know what to do with them. Edwin says, “Pat made pies, and I took the pies to a parking lot alongside Highway 6 in Hastings. I sold both fresh apples and 20 or 30 apple pies. Thanksgiving, I sold 39 pies, and before Easter, 32 pies.”

Today the Choquettes set up their fresh produce and pie store at farmer’s markets in Franklin, Minden, Kearney and Holdrege.

“I enjoy meeting people who appreciate fresh vegetables and fruits at the farmer’s markets. Our best market is in Minden because we’ve done that one the longest. We know people in Minden and they know us. This is our first year at the Holdrege market, and we don’t sell as much because people don’t know us. When they know us, we’ll sell more.”

The science of nuts.

Choquette likes nut trees for their graceful shape, shade, and generous production of nuts.

When he answered an advertisement on black walnut trees for sale, he learned that black walnuts are native to Nebraska, and that horticulturists at the University of Nebraska have developed varieties that produce nuts as large as an apricot and with thin, soft shells.

Choquette’s interest led him to join the Nebraska Nut Growers Association, the second largest association of nut growers in the United States. Association members taught him about improving the quality of his fruit and nuts through grafting.

“Grafting is fascinating,” he said. He subsequently planted and grafted nine acres of nut trees including black walnuts, almond, pecan, and hazelnut. On cold winter days, Choquette retires to his green house to cracks nuts with an industrial nut cracker. He packages the nut meats and refrigerates them to preserve their flavor. Choquette says, “Black walnut cookies are the best flavored cookies you will ever eat.” (Pat Choquette’s Black Walnut Cookies recipe is below.)

Advice to gardeners

• Melons are a dry land fruit. Melons taste bitter if they are watered daily.
• When a variety produces well and you like the flavor, save the seed. Our Crimson Sweet watermelon is the Cadillac of water melons. We save our own seed and plant it year after year.
• I drip irrigate everything, and I set timers for the drip system. I can water thoroughly and then stop the water.
• Asparagus produces on the third year. In the fall asparagus plants are storing nutrients that will produce asparagus stalks in the early spring. Feed, water and add compost to the plants during the fall.
• Cool nights make an apple red.
• When pruning a fruit tree, take branches out of the center of the tree so the sun can penetrate the tree.
• I wash all the produce and dry it over screens that I set up on saw horses.
• Removing the black walnut outer shell soon after the nut matures lessens the bitter flavor in the nut.
• With carrots the sun germinates the seed. I sprinkle the seed on the seed bed, wet the seeds, and then after they have sprouted, I sift peat moss over the sprouts and gently wet the peat moss.

Endings and beginnings.

In October, the farmer’s markets fold their tables and benches, the gardeners begin their fall chores of fertilizing and composting, cleaning up plots, getting ready for next year. But it won’t be long now – just a few short weeks – when Edwin Choquette and gardeners across the country will go to their mailbox and there will be a fresh, colorful copy of the Henry Field’s Seed catalogue.

Who To Contact...

Choquette’s Produce
Edwin and Pat Choquette
(402) 756-0164
patriciachoq@yahoo.com

Pat Choquette’s Black Walnut Cookies

Ingredients:
2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
½ cup Choquette’s black walnut nut meats
(combine flour, baking soda, black walnuts and salt and set aside)
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar
¾ cups butter or Imperial margarine (melt and cool)
1 egg
2 tsp. vanilla

Directions:
Mix sugars and butter/margarine and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Drop cookie dough by the tablespoon onto the parchment paper. Bake at 370 degrees for 9-11 minutes. Cool. Makes approximately 3 dozen.

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