From Out of the Ashes Comes a New Apple Grower of the Year Award

All’s well that ends well. Especially when homemade apple cakes are served. This month marks a bittersweet first anniversary for Greg Nix, recipient of the 2001 American Fruit Grower^SM Apple Grower of the Year award. On Jan. 31 of last year the Hendersonville, NC, resident watched his packinghouse, Apple Wedge Packers, burn to the ground.

“We lost 100% of everything,” Nix says. “We lost all of our apple bins, all of our packing equipment for apples, all of our cider facility and the equipment for it, all the cold storages. When we got it cleaned up, it was a bare piece of ground.”

The disaster shook Henderson County and its $30 million-a-year apple industry. Terry Kelley, Director of the county Agriculture Extension Service, told the Hendersonville Lightning three days after the fire that 20 to 25 of the county’s 80 to 100 growers had been using Apple Wedge to pack and market their crop. The loss, he said, was a “major setback not only for the Nix family but the entire county.”

Eleven months later, Nix recounts the fire, which the fire marshal has ruled accidental.

‘I REMEMBER IT CLEAR’

“We started work that morning, which was a Friday, at 7 o’clock, and by 8:30 that morning we were through with everything we had to do that day. We cleaned up everything, and all the employees except for eight of us were gone by lunchtime. I knew everyone that was here, and half of them were my family.

“Myself and two other guys were on our shipping dock getting a load of apples inspected for loading the following Monday, and some guy run up with a mask on his face, like a lot of workers around here wear, and told us the bins in the back were on fire. We took off around the building and saw the bins. They were stacked probably 20-some feet tall, and there were probably flames going 15 or so feet above that.

“I immediately called 911. They were here within 10 minutes with a truck. They brought 1,200 gallons of water in that truck, and they pumped water till it ran out. Then they started getting hooked up to a hydrant that is across the street, and it took about 15 to 20 minutes to get water going again. But the fire was going so that they couldn’t stop it. There were probably between 4,000 and 5,000 bins at the back of the building because our season was all but over with. And the wind was blowing in the exact correct direction. It blew the fire straight into the building, where there was an open door, and at the back end of the building, where the door was open, there was a lot of cardboard stored. Once it got in the cardboard, got in the insulation, the fire took off.

“Once I identified all of the faces of everybody that was there, I walked up on the bank that is right beside my packing facility and sat down. And I just simply said, ‘Lord, I’m not going to question You today, and I hope I never do.’ And I have not questioned Him yet.”

Instead, one of Nix’s immediate inquiries was directed at packinghouse equipment supplier Durand Wayland. “I asked them when they could have a salesperson up to see me,” Nix says. “They told me Monday.”

And thus the rebuild began while the embers were all but still glowing.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE

Eight months later, at the start of October, Apple Wedge launched a soft reopening. By Oct. 7, the packinghouse was back to business as usual.

“My story could be so much worse than it is,” Nix says. “I mean, buildings and equipment, you can replace.”

The same can be said for trophies — in this case the Apple Grower of the Year award that Nix had received in 2001. Like everything else in the packinghouse at the time of the fire, the trophy was forever lost. “I thought, it being bronze, it might have survived it,” Nix says, “but we shoveled and everything else, and we could not find anything of it.”

Until, that is, an Oct. 24 ceremonial reopening at the facility. Valent USA, sponsor of the Apple Grower of the Year since 2015, surprised Nix with a replacement trophy.

“I had no idea about it. None whatsoever,” Nix says. “(The 2001 award) was marble, and I mean it was a beautiful, beautiful trophy. But trust me, the one I’ve got right now is a beautiful trophy, and it sits on my computer right in front of me every day. To me, of any award I ever received in my career, none of them meant as much to me as that award did because that was a national award.”

Adds Valent USA Territory Account Manager Travis Gardner, who presented the award: “Greg was genuinely thankful for everyone who’s supported him over the years, especially his team and family. The Nix family plays such an essential role in North Carolina apple production, and it was an honor to be part of the celebration.”

Fittingly, the Nix family spent the Christmas season rewarding each of the fire departments that had tried to save their facility.

“We had either 21 or 22 different fire departments here. There were fire trucks backed up at least a half a mile down the road,” Greg Nix says. “So, we ordered apple cakes for them all at Christmas and hand delivered apple cakes to every fire department that was here. They didn’t save my facility, but they saved my cousin’s facility, and there’s just a driveway that separates us. It was my cousin’s facility that we worked at until we got this one going.”