Growing Forward: Bringing New Technology to Our Orchards

We’re excited to share that Mt. Ridge Farms has been selected to participate in Pennsylvania’s Agricultural Innovation Grant Program, giving us the opportunity to bring several new technologies into our orchards and study how they perform in a real-world farming environment.

For us, the most exciting part of this opportunity isn’t simply adding new equipment. It’s having the chance to try new approaches, measure their effectiveness, and learn how emerging technologies can complement the experience and practices we already rely on every day. From orchard management to harvest, each of these projects will allow us to explore a different part of the growing process.

A New Approach to Orchard Pruning

One of the technologies we’re especially excited to introduce is the Grunner Grizzly, a mechanical orchard-pruning system that will be implemented for the first time in the United States as part of this project.

The Grizzly takes a different approach to traditional orchard pruning. Using multiple horizontal cutting units, the machine creates targeted openings, or “windows,” within the tree canopy. These openings are designed to allow more sunlight and airflow into the interior of the tree while mechanically completing work that would traditionally require a significant amount of hand pruning.

For our team, there is a lot we want to learn. How will our trees respond? How much follow-up hand pruning will still be necessary? What effect will it have on labor efficiency, fruit quality, and the overall management of our orchards?

Being among the first to put this technology to work in a U.S. orchard makes the opportunity even more exciting. We’ll be able to evaluate it firsthand and determine where it may or may not fit into our operation over the long term.

Rethinking the Apple Harvest

We’ll also be implementing a vacuum-assisted harvest system, technology designed to make the process between picking an apple from the tree and placing it into the bin more efficient.

Traditionally, apples are hand-picked into picking bags, which are then carefully emptied into bins. Vacuum-assisted technology changes that process.

The apple is still picked by a person, but instead of being placed into a picking bag, it enters a specially designed tube that transports it toward the bin. The system is designed to move fruit carefully while reducing some of the repetitive handling involved in traditional harvesting.

For an apple operation, that raises some exciting possibilities.

We’re interested in studying whether the system can improve picking efficiency, reduce physical demands on our harvest crews, and maintain the careful fruit handling that is so important when harvesting fresh-market apples.

It’s one thing to see what a technology can do on paper. We’re looking forward to seeing what it can do during an actual Mt. Ridge Farms harvest.

Exploring Precision Harvest Technology

Another part of the project will introduce precision harvest technology into our operation.

Precision agriculture is about using better tools, technology, and information to make farm operations more efficient and more intentional. Bringing that approach into harvest gives us another opportunity to evaluate how technology can support our crews and improve one of the most important stages of our season.

As with the other equipment, our goal is to put the technology to work under real orchard conditions and learn from the results.

Putting Innovation to the Test

That is really what this opportunity means to us: learning. New technology comes with exciting possibilities, but every orchard is different. Terrain, tree structure, varieties, weather, crop load, harvest conditions, and the people operating the equipment can all influence how well a new system performs. We want to understand those details.

Over time, we’ll be looking at how these technologies integrate with our existing practices, where they improve efficiency, how they affect our workforce, and ultimately whether they help us grow and harvest a quality crop more effectively.

Growing Forward

Agriculture has always evolved. The equipment in our orchards today looks very different from what previous generations used, but the willingness to adapt, solve problems, and find better ways of doing things has always been part of farming.

These projects are another step in that process for Mt. Ridge Farms. We’re grateful for the opportunity provided through Pennsylvania’s Agricultural Innovation Grant Program and genuinely excited to get these technologies into our orchards. There will be plenty to learn along the way and that’s exactly what we’re looking forward to.

We can’t wait to put these new tools to work and see where they take us.