MT. JULIET, Tenn. (WKRN) — As summer comes to a close, the harm from this summer's extreme heat will stick around.
Wendy and Amy Dorfman co-own Breeden's Orchard in Mt. Juliet. Since buying the orchard in 2017, the orchard has continued to grow, becoming a Wilson County staple — selling apples, peaches, pumpkins and more. Wendy called the orchard "a labor of love."
"Amy was in the comedy business. I was a paralegal for 18 years," Wendy added. "When we took this over, we were like, 'We don't really know what we're doing but we'll figure it out!'"
The pair has worked to bring apple picking to the farm, but it's a process that's been years in the making. As the extreme heat has impacted much of Middle Tennessee, it's led to changes in how the Dorfmans care for young apple trees, including their spray schedule to keep bugs and disease at bay in the fruit.
It's also impacted the number of outsourced pumpkins they have on hand as pumpkin picking season kicks off.
"When we bought the orchard, all the trees were between 30 and 35 years old and what I first learned is that orchards are typically between 15 to 18 years," Amy said. "When we replanted the apple trees, we said, 'Yeah, we're like five years away from having apples.'...We still are a year, two years from really starting to pick some apples."
According to NOAA, 2024 was the 9th warmest summer in a 129-year record. Wilson County experienced similar heat waves. Despite the extreme temperatures, the Dorfmans said that they would continue their labor of love.
"Every time a farm leaves a farmer's hands and becomes condominiums, houses, strip malls it is farmland that is always gone," Amy said. "Nobody's going to take that strip mall and turn it back into a farm."