Joe Carlson has been growing apples for more than 30 years in Winsted. He is now looking forward to retirement, if he can find the right person to take over the orchard.
Millie Fowler uses a mechanical apple peeler created by Joe Carlson to peel 70 gallons worth of apples per day to be used in Carlson’s take-and-bake pies. The leftovers are fed to some lucky cows down the street.
Janette Smith shows off her pie crusts. She makes 400 to 500 crusts per day.
Joe Carlson discovered his love for agriculture during his sophomore year of high school in 1970 when his family bought a 200-acre farm in Winsted. He found himself immersed in the world of farming, spending three years working alongside his father on their farm.
“I got the agricultural bite,” Carlson said. “I loved agriculture and I wanted to figure out a way to make agriculture work in a way that I liked.”
Agriculture hooked him, and he embraced it wholeheartedly, but Carlson wasn’t certain how he could translate that love into a fulfilling career. His work in non-destructive testing took him to the Pacific Northwest. Traveling through the region, he couldn’t help but notice the flourishing agricultural landscapes that were filled with orchards and vineyards, he said.
“Traveling around I saw apples and I thought,’ I love agriculture, how can I make this work,’” Carlson said.
His fascination with these thriving agricultural regions, particularly the apple orchards he encountered, stirred the question: Could apples be grown successfully in Minnesota? This curiosity led him to reach out to the University of Minnesota, seeking answers and guidance. The university advised Carlson that Minnesota could indeed produce excellent apples.
Minnesota’s apple legacy dates back to the mid-1800s when European settlers encountered difficulties growing their favorite fruit trees due to harsh winters. In response, the University of Minnesota established a fruit breeding program over a century ago.
“In order to grow fruit trees, we needed to invent new varieties,” said Jack Tillman, University of Minnesota fruit breeding researcher. “Some of our varieties do better here than they do anywhere else.”
The university’s program played a critical role in producing apple varieties uniquely tailored to the state’s environment. Over the years, it has introduced several popular apples like Honeycrisp and Sweet Tango, notable for their crisp textures and exceptional flavors, he said.
After talking with the university, Carlson decided to turn the family farm in Winsted into an apple orchard, which has become a popular destination for apple enthusiasts.
This year is one of the best apple seasons Carlson has seen on his orchard, “I’ve got over 2,000 bushels,” he said.
Carlson and his late wife, Colleen, started the orchard, building it from the ground up, planting the first trees in 1985. In 1994 they added to the business, converting the 1931 pig barn into a restaurant and bakery.
However, what might be his best crop could be Carlson’s last. After 31 years he’s ready to hang his boots, enjoy the fruits of his labor and return to Oregon.
“I want to retire,” he said. “But you get a business going like this, if it can continue why not keep it going? I just have to move off … just losing Colleen, it makes me realize life is short. I’ve got two boys, one in the accounting-slash-financial world in North Dakota and one’s a nurse down at Mayo (in Rochester) and they’re happy doing that. I don’t have family members to, I don’t have enough kids. I don’t have somebody I can say, ‘here’s the perfect one to do this.’”
Carlson’s Orchard Bakery and Restaurant has been a staple in the county since 1992, serving homemade soup and sandwiches on freshly baked bread with fresh pies in addition to the apples, but this year the restaurant will be closed for the season.
Colleen Carlson died in 2021, leaving big shoes to fill at the restaurant.
“We lost Colleen, and she was just a godsend to everybody that met her,” Carlson said. “Losing Colleen was a big jolt in the business and it’s hard to find that manager to replace her.”
Carlson and his wife planted the farm with apple trees in 1985, then returned to Oregon so Joe could work. The two spent years traveling back and forth working on the orchard. Carlson worked full-time in Oregon, while Colleen came back and ran the show in the summertime. She even installed the orchard irrigation system.
“By the seventh year we needed to make the decision of coming back full-time to do apples or stay in Oregon,” Carlson said. “I fell in love with Oregon, and I didn’t want to come back, but we had this investment made, so we made the decision, let’s bring our two boys back here. They came back at age 4 and 3, just a perfect time to start growing up on a farm.”
Oregon was nice but Carlson got hooked on apples, he said. His job in non-destructive testing helped finance the operation, so they were able to pay as they went without going into debt.
The orchard now hosts 3,500 apple trees and 10-12 varieties. This year the orchard bakery staff is on track to make 20,000 to 25,000 pies which will be sold at stores and through fundraisers.
Carlson’s Orchard has a special relationship with the University of Minnesota. The apples on his orchard were all developed by the university.
“This site grows good Honeycrisps,” Carlson said. “The university has this tremendous need for fruit because they sell fruit at their apple house, and they don’t grow enough fruit. I need partners like that to get this crop harvested. Once it’s ready to go, you have to get it off the tree when it’s at its peak. So the university would be somebody that will come out. They typically come out every year and make two or three runs, 100 bushels a run. We have a great relationship with them. We also sell them their pies.”
Cecil Horseman has worked at Carlson’s Orchard for 12 years and said this year’s crop is the best he’s ever seen.
“This is a big crop,” he said. “I remember when Joe had 700 bushels and I thought that was a lot but 2,000!”
Carlson has received numerous calls from the community urging him to keep the business running. He is looking for alternatives to do so while still taking a step back, he said.
Running a business that blends the worlds of hospitality and apple farming requires a unique set of skills and a passion for both industries, he said.
“Growing apples is, you get them under control, work them, hire some people to do some of the jobs, manage it. And it gives you a lot of freedoms,” Carlson said. “It helps to be mechanical, work with tractors, work with equipment, work with people. You have to be a people person. You’re going to have to hire when the restaurant is going, we hire between 45 and 50 people to run that.”
In order to help with the larger-than-ever crop Carlson is offering you-pick hours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays until Oct. 28.
“We’ve had some wonderful people, our employees have been wonderful,” Carlson said. “It’s been a great business. I have no regrets doing it. Colleen and I have asked, would we do it again? And we both had to think about it a little bit, because there’s some good and bad times to it. But the good times, the good outweighs the bad.”
REACH students and REACH program director Chad Harlander pose with the Hutchinson Middle School lunchroom staff. The students brought letters of appreciation, candy and star balloons to the staff as a way of saying “thanks for all you do for us.”
Michelle Kopesky, Joanie Steinbach, Debora Ryan, Anita McCarthy, Connie Johnson, Shelley McDonald and Barbara Newton take a break from their jobs to get a quick picture together.
Showing appreciation and giving back to those around the community is part of being a good Samaritan.
REACH, a school program that helps students academically, socially and emotionally, wants to help kids be good people. To do this, the program started an initiative called 36 Weeks of Kindness/Service.
“This is the first year of the initiative…and we (REACH) have encouraged our other 43 schools with the REACH program to jump on board and spread the mission,” REACH director Chad Harlander said of the program, which has its roots at Hutchinson High School.
The initiative started Sept. 1 and focuses on teaching two of REACH’s core values: relationships and character.
“With relationships being our district’s number one core value, we want to embrace it by modeling it,” Harlander said. “Character is just doing what is right when no one is looking. This is what we are supposed to do with acts of kindness and/or service for others. We want to teach empathy as well as caring for each other.”
Each week Hutchinson Middle School REACH students choose an act of kindness or service they would like to perform.
Students wrote personal welcome letters to Hutchinson Middle School Principal Dawn Holtz as their first act. The students then hand delivered the letters to her throughout the day.
Students decided for their second week they wanted to help the people who keep their schools clean. They worked with middle school custodians to clean up, giving the students a greater appreciation of what the custodians do.
The third week focused again on staff within the school, this time in the cafeteria. Lunchroom staff make meals for students at the middle school every day, and REACH students wanted to show how much they appreciate all that staff do by giving them letters of appreciation, candy and star balloons.
The best part? The recipients of the kindness don’t often know until the students present their gifts or acts of service. The lunchroom staff were ecstatic about the letters and gifts with plenty of smiles and “thank yous” being thrown around during the lunch before the homecoming parade, Harlander said.
“A little act of kindness can go a long way and ripple through a school or community,” Harlander said.
REACH students decided that for the fourth week they would help a member of the community who had lost their home to a house fire. The students found spare change and put it into a glass mason jar. The money will be given to the family by a staff member close to them.
The 36 Weeks of Kindness/Service initiative will continue throughout the school year finishing close to the end of the 2023-2024 school year.
Andy
Reid
Hutchinson City Center at 111 Hassan St. S.E., Hutchinson is the central location for many city services. It hosts the Hutchinson City Council meeting at 5:30 p.m. on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. On the second Monday of each month it also hosts the Hutchinson School Board.
The average Hutchinson homeowner will pay about $106 more in property tax next year if the City Council approves gives final approval to the 2024 levy in December.
A preliminary levy of $9.02 million received City Council approval during its Sept. 26 meeting. The council and residents now have a couple months to contemplate that levy before final approval. The levy can be reduced but cannot increase from the preliminary amount which received unanimous approval last week.
The levy amounts to a 9.3% increase over this year's $8.25 million, and includes a general fund levy of $6.51 million and outstanding debt — road improvements and the new police facility expenses — of $2.48 million.
Performance-based wage increases, health insurance and other benefits are expected to increase by about $657,000.
“The expenditures (are) up about $934,000, which is a 16% increase to our tax levy alone without any offsets with additional revenue,” Finance Director Andy Reid said. “The main driver there is the wages and benefits went up over $657,000.”
The revenue budget reflects some increases and decreases, according to Reid, including:
- Local government aid from the state increased by $200,000, helping to offset the expenditure increase.
- Building permit revenue declined by $50,000 in anticipation of a tougher housing market.
- Other revenue sources contributed approximately $82,000 to the overall increase.
Total revenue increased a little over $232,000, which offset the expenditures increase by 4%.
“That ends up being a net tax levy increase of $702,190 for a 12% levy increase,” Reid said.
It was also noted that the budget for supplies and services is expected to increase due to inflationary pressures.
The City Council can reduce the final levy from the preliminary levy, but not increase it. The annual Truth-in-Taxation hearing was set for 6 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 5.
HRA LEVY
Also approved was the 2024 preliminary Housing and Redevelopment Authority levy.
The HRA board requested $165,000, an increase of 3.1% from the 2023 levy of $160,000. The maximum levy allowed by state statute is $278,410. The levy, which supports the HRA’s operations out of City Center, was at or near the maximum from 2013-2021, but in 2023 there was a significant drop due to retirement and staffing changes.
EDA LEVY
The Hutchinson City Council also approved the Economic Development Authority 202 preliminary levy.
The EDA requested $272,842, an increase of 5.7% from the 2023 levy of $258,169. The requested amount is the maximum levy allowed by state statute.
Michael
Scott
The release of Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment data left many schools disappointed at what they saw, among them Hutchinson Public Schools.
Only about half of Hutchinson students tested were found proficient in reading and math, with even fewer proficient in science.
The MCA is a Minnesota Department of Education-approved assessment covering math, reading and science given to students from third through 12th grade.
Hutchinson School District is doing better than the state averages, but with state averages saying fewer than 50% of students being proficient, some local officials wondered whether that was a good statement.
Averages for all grades tested, found Hutchinson's averages as compared to state averages were:
- Math: 45.5% versus 53.4%
- Reading: 49.9% versus 53.8%
- Science: 39.2% versus 44.4%
Should the district be alarmed at this data? Director of Teaching and Learning Michael Scott says, “it’s complicated.”
“It’s one data point,” he said. “We don’t use these (tests) as the one deciding factor for student learning."
MCAs are taken just once per year, Scott said, and many variables that can affect student performance.
“Students can opt out, skip out or just not feel good the day of the test,” he said. “Certain grade levels just take a short amount of time. They rush, and that I feel, is not an accurate depiction of what they know. They're not maybe caring about it. It doesn't have any — they're not seeing — a value in it. And I think there's some feeling of that.”
The MCA has no consequence for students, as the assessment is a measure of knowledge. The test has no effect on grades or scholarship opportunities, but it does affect their schedule.
“Students are missing classes to take these tests,” Scott said. “Some of them just want to get back (to regular classes).”
The students also test at different times as the school determines when they will administer the test.
“There's a wide window and we try to do it as late in the year as possible in that window, but it starts in March and goes 'til May,” Scott said.
Schools can schedule tests on any school day during those months, leaving some students with a month or two more of knowledge and preparation.
“We (Hutchinson) try to make sure our assessments are as late in the window as possible so we can get through as many of the standards and benchmarks as possible to prepare kids, but then we're getting to the end of the year,” Scott said.
This can further affect results as many students are preparing for final exams or college if they are seniors in high school. The district will analyze data, looking at benchmarks to see if patterns develop, and prepare action plans as necessary, he said.
Shen science scores declined in the past, the district invested in additional science resources.
“This year, we’re implementing a new math resource,” Scott said. “Sometimes there's a natural dip in (scores) as you implement and get to teaching it.”
The tests provide hard data about student performance, but are not the only reflection of how students are doing.
"I think we need to look at the data," Scott said, "but there are more measures of success than the MCA."
A second data point
To show another data point and offer insight into the MCA scores, Scott recommended viewing ACT scores of high school seniors who would have taken the MCA at the end of their junior year.
The ACT scores on a scale of 1 to 36, with 36 being a perfect score. It covers English, math, reading and science individually and combines those scores into an average.
Hutchinson High School date showed:
- Math: MCA 41.6% and ACT 22.8 or 63.3%
- Reading: MCA 49% and ACT 22.6 or 62.7%
- Science: MCA 44.4% and ACT 23.1 or 64.2%
There are variables to the ACT scores just as there is with the MCA. Not all students will take it, such as those not planning to go to college. Students also are more motivated to take the exam because a higher score means testing out of some classes and better scholarships.
But a 20% difference should not be ignored. Students are performing better on the ACT, which comes with consequences good and bad. It also allows students to retake it at a later date. Both being variables in student success, Scott explained.
