About Tom Rasch & Son Orchards LLC
The Rasch family has been farming for generations, back to the age when most all families had a hand in the soil. Tom Rasch Sr. began cultivating apples on this land near Belding, Michigan in the 1960’s. He grew the farm from 80 acres to the current 200 acres of managed land growing dozens of crops.
Tom Rasch Jr began transforming the farm in the 1980’s towards an apple focused fruit farm. He has constantly reinventing how to best grow apples and cherries with all the tools available. Bringing frost protection to most of the farm, creative marketing, building a strong team environment, utilizing cutting edge methods/tools for tree health, planting new varieties (SweeTango, Smitten, etc.), grafting over to new varieties, and always focusing on the quality of our fruit has kept Tom Rasch & Son Orchards LLC successful over the pressure to become a large corporate farm.
Today Tom Jr is beginning to pass the pruning shears to the next generation. Kyle, his oldest of three sons, has been persistently pursuing what direction he may guide the farm over the next phase of the farm. For the past decade he has been visiting farms around the world to see what is and isn’t working. The past few years he has been creating the farm he hopes to raise his children on someday by trialing more ecologically sound practices not too dissimilar from what his grandfather grew up using.
Some practices that are being realized at scale today are reduced tillage, diverse cover crops, phasing out weed spray with mowing and mulching, actively managing soil/tree health to strengthen the trees natural defense, dedicating over 10% of farmland to natural habitat and wildflowers for bees and beneficial insects, and converting 20 acres of apples to organic/regenerative certified.
The future at Tom Rasch & Son Orchards is creating an ever more uplifting environment for our family/farm team, growing such healthy and flavorful food that it could be considered medicine, and demonstrating a way farms can collaborate with nature.