Kordick Family Farm

Just up the hill from Jessup’s Mill on the Dan River and boasting a spectacular view of Pilot Mountain, Kordick Family Farm is located in the Asbury community of Stokes County, NC. We planted our flagship apple orchard of over 150 heirloom varieties in 2009. While fruit orchards are now few and far between outside of the mountain region of North Carolina, apples were once a familiar part of the northwestern Stokes County landscape. To this day, old timey variety names like Buckingham and Horse roll off the tongues of area residents, and remnants of old orchards can still be found if you know where to look.

Soon after we moved to the area, we put up fliers seeking regional apple trees to graft from, hoping some rare old varieties might be found on someone’s family homestead or in the remains of a once-commercial orchard. It was the local mailman who initially answered our call, and he came to serve as our ambassador, not only offering us apple scion wood from his family’s old plantings, but also introducing us to new neighbors with more varieties and stories to share.

This is how we came to eventually find the Smith Seedling apple, a truly local variety that was first grown by Garland Smith around the turn of the 20th Century in what was once his large orchard near Asbury Road and NC 89. The last Smith Seedling tree planted on Smith family land died in 2015, but the variety lives on, and today can again be found in our present-day orchard, just around the corner from where it originated. It will still be a few years before our Smith Seedlings bear fruit, but ten years after our first apple trees were put in the ground, September 21st, 2019 will mark the grand opening of Kordick Family Farm, and coincide with Francisco FarmFest. Please check our website, www.kordickfamilyfarm.com, for more information.