The Kimmerly Orchard has been four generations in the making and the fifth generation is already working to continue the family operation.  This property has been in our family since 1907.  The property is located on the east slopes of the Cascade Mountains , up Squilchuck Canyon , six miles from Mission Ridge Ski Area, in the beautiful Wenatchee Valley .  We are at approximately 2500’ elevation.  The property was originally purchased by my Great Grandfather, Daniel Hedman, in the fall of 1907.  The next year they built a barn for the horses and cows, a blacksmith shop, sheds for the pigs and chickens, and eventually a house.  As years passed, orchards of cherries, apples, pears and apricots were planted.  A packing shed was built to process and box the fruit for market. They irrigated by ditches. 

Great Grandfather Hedman passed away in December of 1940 and the property was inherited by my Grandmother, Anna Zimmerman, who became the second generation to own the property.  Grandma Zimmerman lived a couple miles down the road on property homesteaded by her husband, Theodore Zimmerman, in 1888.  Theodore had passed away in July of 1940, so Grandma Zimmerman was left with both places to run.  Her son-in-law, Truest Smart (my father), and her son, Dan Zimmerman, took care of the daily operation of both ranches for the next couple years.

In 1942, my parents, Truest and Agnes Smart, purchased the Daniel Hedman property from Grandma Zimmerman.  They moved into the house built back in 1908.  So began the third generation of farmers on this property along with their two daughters, Mary Jo and Judy.  I did not come along until 1948.  Mom always said it was a bad winter the year I was born; it froze so cold that they had no cherry crop the next year.  So much for my joining the family. 

My father spent the next fifty years growing cherries, apples, and pears.  Farming equipment and methods were modernizing after the years of the great depression.  My father purchased a tractor, built a trailer, and began taking his fruit to town to commercial processors to sell.  I believe he began taking the fruit to JM Wade Fruit Co.  Then Columbia Fruit Packers was formed in 1946 and to my knowledge our cherries have been taken to them ever since.   My Dad still had to irrigate by ditch and he sprayed by hand.  He purchased his first and only speed sprayer in about 1960.  About that time, he also partnered with three neighbors and built a new pipeline for irrigation.  He was then able to buy aluminum sprinkler pipe, now known as hand lines.

Fruit was picked by hand and placed in wooden lugs (boxes), pickers were paid by the pound, and the boxes were stacked six high and hauled to town on a flat bed truck.  I remember many trips with my father to Columbia Fruit warehouse.  My biggest thrill had nothing to do with the cherries, but I always got to buy a chocolate soda pop from the machine on the warehouse porch.  Boxes evolved to plastic in the 1970’s and cherries were taken to town in wooden half bins.  This was quite the chore for farmers who did not own wheel tractors with forklifts to move bins.  We had to place the bins by hand in the back of the pickup and then dump the cherries from the plastic boxes into the bins. 

My father, Truest Smart passed away in May of 1987.  We were living in Anchorage, Alaska at the time.  My mother continued to live in the old house and leased the orchard which by this time was only cherries.  In the winter of 1990 my mother decided she wanted to move into town and sell the ranch.  My children were crushed to think that someone else would have our beloved cherry orchard, so we made a deal with my Mom and agreed to purchase the property.  Unfortunately that winter was a bad year with a heavy freeze and there was no cherry crop in the summer of 1991.  Gee is this history repeating itself; it seems like my return to the ranch produced the same results as the year I was born at the ranch -  no crop!! 

In the summer of 1991, our oldest daughter, Kara, moved to Wenatchee from Alaska and into the old house to take care of changing the sprinklers for the summer.  As I mentioned there was no crop,  so there were no cherries to pick.  Our youngest daughter, Amie, also came to Wenatchee that summer and stayed with Grandma Smart and started high school in the fall.  Our son Lance and I moved to Wenatchee and into the old house in November 1991.  Finally, Dale was able to leave his job in Alaska and move with us to Wenatchee in July of 1992.  We again became a family, with the exception of our middle daughter Julie who remained in Alaska .  We officially purchased the property from my mother the summer of 1992, fifty years after she and my father had purchased it from her mother.

We now live in the original house built in 1908 by my Great Grandfather, with some remodeling.  We have enlarged the orchard tremendously since we purchased it.  In 1991 there were approximately 300 cherry trees on the property.  Today we have closer to 3000 cherry trees.  We interplanted the orchard that existed, as well as planting another entire new orchard in what was an old hay field back in the days of Daniel Hedman.  We have purchased two wheel tractors with fork lifts, we have a new power sprayer, and we have underground sprinklers which do not have to be moved each day, just turned on and off.  The cherries are still picked by hand and placed into the plastic lugs.  Then they are transferred into plastic bins to haul to Columbia Fruit.  However, the one thing that has never changed is our resolve to produce the biggest, juiciest cherries for you!! 

My husband Dale and I are looking forward to the days when the last ten years of planting trees will begin producing a full crop.  We now have five types of cherries on the property, mostly Bings, with some Rainiers, a few Lamberts, the new Sweethearts, and Black Republicans which are used as pollinizers.  Four varieties we sell commercially Bings, Rainiers, Sweethearts and Lamberts.  We now offer them to you through this web site fruit stand.  We know you will enjoy eating them as much as we enjoy growing them, and we know you will return year after year to obtain the finest cherries on earth!!