Harvesting Memories: The Evolution of Farming and Family Entertainment at Eckert's Orchards

Speaker (00:00:00) (-) - For over 175 years. This is the place where you can have fun amongst apples, peaches, blackberries, strawberries, pumpkins and veggies. You pick your own and you enjoy that time with your family right here on Saint Louis In Tune. Greetings, listeners in listener land, and welcome to Saint Louis In Tune and thank you for joining us for fresh perspectives on issues and events with experts, community leaders and everyday people who are driving change and making an impact that shapes our society and our world. Mark Langston is one of those people. Mark, how are you today, mister? I'm okay, Mr. Langston. I won't call you sir.

Speaker (00:00:50) (-) - No, don't do that. And Mr. is not good either, but that's okay. Hey, y'all over there? Yeah. How y'all doing? I'm. Yeah. Good to see him. I'm still the. We're still in the allergy. Kind of pollinated. Yes. Kind of time of year. So that's been rough on my nose. Head. Yeah.

Speaker (00:01:07) (-) - Yours in mine.

Speaker (00:01:08) (-) - The whole head thing. It's a.

Speaker (00:01:10) (-) - Tough time of the year for people who have allergic rhinitis or.

Speaker (00:01:14) (-) - Retinitis. Sinus sinusitis for the day. Yeah.

Speaker (00:01:18) (-) - No, the word for the day is something to do with clothing. But we'll get to that later on.

Speaker (00:01:23) (-) - Okay.

Speaker (00:01:24) (-) - But before we do that, we've got to return to civility as we always do. It's important, especially at this time of our society and culture, because people seem to be losing their minds left and right, that they return to civility and try to be civil with one another. If someone helps you move, buy them lunch, or help them with a big task of their own. Moving is tough, emotional work. Saying thank you with a beer just doesn't cut it at a pizza. So if someone helps you move, buy them lunch, or help them with a big task of their own like maybe they want to move.

Speaker (00:01:57) (-) - To, isn't that the truth?

Speaker (00:01:58) (-) - You help me, I'll help you with the move.

Speaker (00:02:00) (-) - I know every time I've helped somebody, I've gotten nothing.

Speaker (00:02:03) (-) - I'd be lucky to get a bottle of water.

Speaker (00:02:05) (-) - I've stopped moving people and moving myself. Now.

Speaker (00:02:09) (-) - Do you still have your pickup truck, by the way? We still do. You probably get a lot of phone calls.

Speaker (00:02:14) (-) - Oh, they used to call. They don't call.

Speaker (00:02:16) (-) - Anymore. Yeah.

Speaker (00:02:17) (-) - Because when they asked for the truck, I'm willing to lend the truck out.

Speaker (00:02:20) (-) - Are you? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Can we get your phone number real quick? No.

Speaker (00:02:26) (-) - No. Not possible.

Speaker (00:02:29) (-) - I'm ready for the flow. You ready? Yeah. Yes.

Speaker (00:02:33) (-) - Well, if you were wondering about all of those peaches, apples, blackberries, strawberries. And I'm getting my mouth watering because I'm looking at a fresh batch. I smelled the bottom. And that's the way to do it, because then you can smell. Is that if they smell like strawberries, like you go into store, if it smells like a peach, it's a peach. If it smells like strawberry.

Speaker (00:02:52) (-) - Is that right? Yes.

Speaker (00:02:53) (-) - I never knew that.

Speaker (00:02:54) (-) - But we have a peach of an expert here. She's got the apple right on her eye on what she's doing every single day. Angie Eckert. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois and horticulture and a master's of science and agricultural education from the Ohio State University. She is here. She taught horticulture at Southwestern Illinois College, coordinated adult ed classes for Missouri Botanical Garden, and ran a horticultural speaking business for several years before joining her husband's seventh generation orchard and retail operation efforts. And we all know efforts in the Saint Louis area. Wow. She serves as the vice president of retail operation for Eckhart's, located in Belleville, Illinois, where she oversees the specialty food store, garden center, as well as retail products at four seasonal locations. And she's here to talk to us about efforts, our favorite spring and summer recipes. And I love this. It's peach berry, corn, tomato and more. And you, welcome to Saint Louis and tune.

Speaker (00:03:54) (-) - Thanks. Happy to be here.

Speaker (00:03:55) (-) - I want to just rip the page off the front and eat it and stuff it my mouth.

Speaker (00:04:01) (-) - It looks gorgeous.

Speaker (00:04:03) (-) - That was the idea to really show off. The products are so fresh when they're in season and they just sell themselves, and so we wanted this book to be different from any of the past cookbooks by just eye candy. You look at it and you just want to consume it.

Speaker (00:04:20) (-) - How many other cookbooks have there been? So this is our ninth.

Speaker (00:04:23) (-) - So we had our first cookbook came out in the 60s. And then over the years we've changed the style a little bit, but they've all been very recipe heavy and not very imaged, not as many images. But now that color is king in in AI stimulation and marketing and all things. We were excited that Reading Press, the publisher we worked at, it's located here in Saint Louis, had this format available, and it really works well with our recipes that are about fresh, beautiful things.

Speaker (00:04:51) (-) - I want to talk a little bit about your background.

Speaker (00:04:54) (-) - Talk about Eckhart's background. And Mark, I mentioned to her before we came in, I have a ton of questions here to ask her, but having it's a.

Speaker (00:05:02) (-) - Bushel of, are you going.

Speaker (00:05:03) (-) - To score me.

Speaker (00:05:04) (-) - A bushel.

Speaker (00:05:04) (-) - Of questions?

Speaker (00:05:05) (-) - I like that one.

Speaker (00:05:06) (-) - I'm getting nervous over here, though. You're going to keep score. Make sure I can answer all I know.

Speaker (00:05:10) (-) - You're fine. Let's talk a little bit about Eckhart's. Absolutely.

Speaker (00:05:14) (-) - Can I say seventh? I can't, we're now eight eight.

Speaker (00:05:17) (-) - I updated that so my.

Speaker (00:05:20) (-) - Niece.

Speaker (00:05:20) (-) - And nephew also work in the business full time.

Speaker (00:05:22) (-) - So when did they start? Is that on your list of questions?

Speaker (00:05:25) (-) - On my list?

Speaker (00:05:26) (-) - It's eight generations. That's. Yeah. Unbelievable. That's. I don't know of any other business that's had eight generations usually.

Speaker (00:05:34) (-) - Like a second or third generation. They kind of cash in the business.

Speaker (00:05:38) (-) - They are rare. There are a couple in Illinois that are friends of ours, but it is rare to have wow, seventh and eighth generation.

Speaker (00:05:45) (-) - So the first generation that did that, which this is over 175 years. Yeah. Why was it apples?

Speaker (00:05:53) (-) - Well, at the time people grew their food because they didn't have access to fresh fruit food. So even you probably your grandparents grew a lot of things. You you don't grow because there wasn't the same ability to get produce out of season as we have now when the highways expanded and trucking change, then that changed everything about how people got produced. But if you wanted to have it 100 years ago, you had to grow it. So it was very common of people settling as population moved west to grow more products of their own.

Speaker (00:06:24) (-) - So as you have done, like some family history or been involved in family history, how have you seen the history of farming change over the generations? And obviously equipment, that's one thing, mechanical kinds of things. But from your educational background and then from being working with experts and knowing the history, how how things change on the farms.

Speaker (00:06:48) (-) - So obviously mechanization is pushing agriculture forward in so many ways.

Speaker (00:06:54) (-) - And so things today that we use are completely different. It was a lot of gut check and manual observation. Now we have computer models to model weather patterns based on our weather stations. We look at the farm in microclimates because you can have very different weather, even just 200ft away. At the top of the hill where I live on the farm might be five degrees warmer than it will be in the bottom of that field, lower land, things like that. So we use weather stations to monitor a lot of that, and also some models that will tell us if we're at risk for certain diseases or insect pressure, things like that. We also have our first drone, which can be used on the farm instead of equipment. It's it allows you to have more density of planting. We have a lot of trellising systems that allow us to do high density plantings. Used to be years ago, the apple trees were huge. I don't know if you remember apple trees from when you were little, but people use ladders and they were climbing up high to get these apples.

Speaker (00:07:55) (-) - Now we use all these dwarfing varieties. So the science has evolved with the plants as well as just the overall maintenance of the farm. And obviously you mentioned equipment has changed. Interestingly too.

Speaker (00:08:07) (-) - There's just not the one farm in Belleville. There's describe all the farms that you have and what is grown on each one.

Speaker (00:08:13) (-) - Yeah. So, the newest addition to our family is the Versailles, Kentucky farm, which is outside of Lexington. They're open the longest of the other farms. So they open they open tomorrow, actually, for the season. They have strawberries, blackberries, peaches, apples, pumpkins. And then they will close right around Halloween. And then the other two locations that we have, Grafton opens in the summer, so it has some of the peaches and blackberries, apples, pumpkins, and then the mill State Farm, which is just open for September and October. In addition to that, we seek higher ground for planting peach trees because they are sensitive to the cold, the frost. So we do have some farms that are disconnected, disconnected from Bellville, and most not all of the property is contiguous.

Speaker (00:09:01) (-) - Or we may rent from a farmer that has that higher ground and crops all have to be rotated too. So there's always this science of where is the next planting going and what was in there. We want to make sure we don't deplete the soils, so we have a regimen to rest soils between crops and rebuild the organic material in the soil before going back in with another crop.

Speaker (00:09:21) (-) - Now, has the farm always been this family kind of friendly, family oriented kind of thing? I not, I'm sure, if the efforts have always been that way, but my point is that it's become really a destination for families to let's go pick some apples. Let's go get the peaches, the blackberries, the strawberries, the pumpkins, the other veggies. And you have a variety of almost year round activities that we have schedules.

Speaker (00:09:44) (-) - Yeah. Chris, my husband, his goal is to have a crop every month of the year because we get calls in January about what are you picking? And we don't have an answer to that.

Speaker (00:09:53) (-) - So you'll have to have him on the show to talk about the horseradish disaster. Because we did try to plant horseradish. One year wasn't much demand for it, but it came in early, so it was a crop we could talk about, but I'll take it. But yeah, it's partly why we added asparagus, because you can start cutting asparagus in April and we just we hate it when people call. And what can we do at state? What can we pick. And we don't have something. So our goal has been over the really the past 25 years to stretch out the experiences on the farm. Our family is very passionate about sharing agriculture with the. And we're thrilled to be part of the Bellville community, the greater Saint Louis community, and it it is the greatest joy to see a family come in three generations, to experience the farm together. And that is why we exist. We we exist to allow people to connect with agriculture and have those memories on the farm when that's not accessible every day to every family.

Speaker (00:10:50) (-) - Right. We are very passionate about providing that and to us, family. We've debated this because our mission is making family memories. And we were like, is that too narrow? But then we finally got to the point that the way the Eckert family describes family, it's not just biology, it's the people you welcome into your home. It's your best friends, it's your adopted kids. It's whatever else is going on in your life that is your family. We want to make those experiences for families incredible.

Speaker (00:11:17) (-) - I've got a I've got a family question here. I've got to find it though. but I.

Speaker (00:11:24) (-) - Have done it.

Speaker (00:11:24) (-) - How many acres do you have? Totally. Do you know. Yeah.

Speaker (00:11:28) (-) - So at Bellville that property is 400 acres and it's dissected by Greenmount Road. So there's 200 acres on the retail side and then across the street, but collectively we're probably closer to a thousand. But it's all mixed up in different areas. And then some of it's rented. But yeah the Bellville property is 400 acres.

Speaker (00:11:49) (-) - So to keep with that family orientation, talk about the best family memories you have. This on the website are around the dinner table. Yeah. Explain that to people who may not understand that concept.

Speaker (00:12:03) (-) - Yeah. So that kind of came out when we were, building the new store and really thinking about we wanted to take beyond our old country store. In 2010, we expanded the Bellville Country store and expanded our restaurant, and we just realized our family is very passionate about meals and meal time. In this crazy world where kids are, families are running wild with all these activities, the one thing that we feel just really unifies families is eating around the dinner table together. I've personally made that a huge priority in my life for my family, and it just we see it as an opportunity to connect after a stressful day, a long day, whatever day. Great day to talk about your day and eat fresh food. So I'm spoiled. I shop at my own store daily and bring home my fresh food and make dinner every night.

Speaker (00:12:54) (-) - I know that's not feasible for everyone, but it is a deep value and our whole family gets excited when asparagus is ready. And then Chris's mom's going to call and say, come on over for dinner, we're going to make asparagus. We've been having it every night and you guys got to come over for dinner. We're just very much a family that celebrates each other around the dinner table.

Speaker (00:13:14) (-) - That relates to a question that homegrown produce versus quote unquote, store bought produce. How is homegrown produce the secret ingredient in home cooking?

Speaker (00:13:26) (-) - Well, number one, it'll be fresher because it hasn't been traveling across the country. And I not that I see things wrong. Eat a lot of produce. If you hear anything, just eat produce. I'm not just saying only eat local. I don't want that to come across. But if you have the opportunity, eat local because you have less of a carbon footprint. It's not being transported. You're also getting it a lot sooner than you would if something's coming from California.

Speaker (00:13:50) (-) - So people always ask, what's the secret to Eckhart's peaches? The secret is they're picked riper and travel shorter distances. So if you get a peach from California, it's likely going to be picked with less sugar. So when it gets here, it's not going to. It might be soft, but it's not going to taste as sweet because it had to be picked harder and greener so it could endure transportation. So our secret here is in the Midwest wants to fill this, this role of serving the local community, fresh produce that's grown in your backyard and close to your door because it'll be fresher and less transport time, which is good.

Speaker (00:14:28) (-) - You're listening to Saint Louis In tune with Arnold Stricker and Mark Langston. We're talking to Angie Eckert, and we're talking going to be really hitting the book, our favorite spring and summer recipes. So why the cookbook now, Angie? Obviously it's spring. Yeah. And it's going to be.

Speaker (00:14:44) (-) - Something that started last summer, I think. Or yeah, last summer I think is when we started working on it.

Speaker (00:14:51) (-) - But so a couple things. We've worked with Reed press for the last several cookbooks, and we were wanting to come out with a new cookbook, but there's some challenges, like I didn't want it to be a hardback book for 50 to $60. I just feel like that's a lot of money to spend on a cookbook, and I wanted something in a lower price point, more attainable, and we saw something at a similar farm. We belong to a lot of groups where other farms like ours share ideas. It's a really cool group because everybody is just committed to farm experiences like they want. We want people to. Go to farms, so we're not competitive with one another. So anyway, this other farm, which is in Omaha, they had a book similar to this, and we visited them in the fall and we were just like, hey, that's cool. And then we found out that Reidy could do this format for us and in this price range. So it all just came together and we thought, okay, we're going to couple spring and summer.

Speaker (00:15:47) (-) - And then my plan is to come out with a fall cookbook, maybe next year. Okay, we'll see a fall winter. Yeah, maybe, I.

Speaker (00:15:53) (-) - Think make some horseradish. Yeah.

Speaker (00:15:56) (-) - Yeah. Tell your husband.

Speaker (00:15:57) (-) - Really? Yeah. We got that horseradish.

Speaker (00:15:59) (-) - Ready to go. The marketing plan. Now, this is really going to work this time.

Speaker (00:16:02) (-) - So I eat all these cookbooks here, and I'm just going to hold them up for those wow viewers who are doing that. Coming up with recipes for this, are these new recipes, are these kind of redone recipes and how did you accumulate them? And then how did you choose the ones that you wanted to put in here?

Speaker (00:16:19) (-) - So this one came together from taking two of the books, The spring and Summer, which include some recipes from our cooking classroom. We no longer have a cooking classroom, but for ten years we had a cooking classroom that offered classes and we did so many recipes in there. So it is a combination of that.

Speaker (00:16:38) (-) - Classes from the cooking classroom and family, traditional recipes that we've been making for years. So we went through the book, Sarah, Jill and myself. Those are my sister in law's, and we highlighted the ones we just put, like our initials by the ones we make the most in our houses. Okay. And then I looked at all those where they overlapped. And that's what went into this book. So this is really the recipes we make the most often today, like in the family. What you're going to find if you come to an expert Mother's Day. Right. Dinner, which, by the way, will be Monday because we all have to work Mother's Day. But if you come to that, you will see 3 or 4 of these recipes in that in those kind of gatherings, birthday parties, things like that. So these truly are our favorites. And I try to balance it out of using all a variety of the crops. So this book has strawberries, asparagus, blackberries, peaches, home grown tomatoes, stuff like that.

Speaker (00:17:31) (-) - So do you grow corn?

Speaker (00:17:33) (-) - We do, we do.

Speaker (00:17:34) (-) - I didn't know that. I'm looking through the book now, and I see quite a few corn recipes and I'm wow.

Speaker (00:17:41) (-) - Sweet corn grown fresh. As for probably having local corn, it to me it is like a fruit. So sweet, so good, right? And really, the recipes here are simple. They're not. They don't have heavy sauces or heavy seasoning because we really like to taste the actual product. You don't want a doctorate so much that you don't get that smell of the strawberries, that fresh flavor. So you're going to find these are light, lightly seasoned, lightly altered. So the recipes as a result are pretty easy, because they're meant to make the produce really shine. Okay.

Speaker (00:18:13) (-) - I'm going to put you on the spot here. Oh, boy. What's your favorite spring recipe and what's your favorite summer recipe?

Speaker (00:18:19) (-) - Okay. Is that like asking what your favorite kid is?

Speaker (00:18:22) (-) - A little bit. So my favorite spring recipe is probably the glazed strawberry pie.

Speaker (00:18:30) (-) - It just makes a really simple syrup kind of thing for fresh strawberries. Again, it's not overly sweet so that you still taste the fruit. And then the one I make, probably one of the most that I make, and I do actually make it year round. It's just a little bit better with homegrown tomatoes. Is the summer or is a salad with red wine vinaigrette? And you can. These are all meant to be customized. Like I pop in some feta cheese. Sometimes I pop in some shredded chicken, so it's a versatile, like a potluck meal, right, that you can take to a lot of events. So those those are probably the two that I've been making the most lately.

Speaker (00:19:07) (-) - What changes have you seen at the on the farm when people come in? I guess my question is how have you viewed cooking changing over the course of time, and how have you seen responses from families? Are they buying more locally, produce things, or are they coming over just for? I'm going to go through the corn maze or whatever at Halloween, or do the pumpkin or whatever.

Speaker (00:19:31) (-) - How have things changed as you've seen time, progress.

Speaker (00:19:35) (-) - So you mentioned bushels at the beginning. So years ago people would buy apples by the bushel. And this is a great big wooden basket. Fill it up. And volume was people took that all home. They canned it. They put it up as our grandparents used to say. And then obviously over time people are more instant use. It's just the way our society has evolved. So there's not as many people buying those large volumes. Our business has been really focused on that because we are starting to see trends of bushels of Apple sales going down, and at the same time, demand for some of these other activities, like the corn maze and the farm experience, the petting zoo, all that kind of stuff was starting to increase. So that was about when we started adding the mill stat concept of the bonfires, the haunted hayride, pig races. You know more of the fun farm themed activities. And so now it's they might be buying a lesser volume and taking it home to eat versus and they might be making one pie or one recipe, but they're not going to freeze a whole batch of strawberry filling and use it all winter like our grandma's did.

Speaker (00:20:41) (-) - So things are definitely evolving in that direction. Also, people are coming out just for the experience of being on the farm, so they might come out and just ride the wagon, take some pictures, and then they might go in the store and buy a bag of apples. So that was something weird to we didn't expect to see, but we're seeing more of that. They might buy, take a picture with their Starbucks cup and get their Instagram feed there.

Speaker (00:21:03) (-) - Right?

Speaker (00:21:03) (-) - Load it up. So whatever. It's just it's interesting to see how and different ages of people are experiencing the farm as well. So part of the reason we added the cider shed to the Bellville location was to add another experience for people and also utilize a product that we weren't taking advantage of. So when people pick apples, there's always apples that fall off the tree or they take a bite, they throw it down on the ground, things like that. So we now have a use for dropped apples. We can use it to make apples, cider, hard apple cider.

Speaker (00:21:36) (-) - It can be fermented and turned into another product.

Speaker (00:21:39) (-) - We've done that with brick River, right?

Speaker (00:21:40) (-) - Yes, yes, they've been an awesome partner for us and they are taking our juice and making hard cider for us under four different labels that we sell on tap and in cans. And we recently got our winery license at the Bellville location, so we will be able to start making some small batch cider just to have kind of pop up fun flavors here and there throughout the year. But the Cider Shed was really like, how else can we make the experience deeper, richer for the guest? And so this is like an outdoor pavilion area. There's also an indoor bar where you can sip on some hard cider or order some food a little more casual than our restaurant. So dog friendly. There's things for kids to do. So that's been a fun addition to to add something that guests can experience if they're not going to pick a huge pile of strawberries, they can pick a few strawberries and then come over to the cider shed and have a strawberry cider, and then go get a Strawberry Sunday.

Speaker (00:22:32) (-) - From mysteries, treats and things.

Speaker (00:22:34) (-) - Like that sounds good to me. I can.

Speaker (00:22:35) (-) - Plan the whole day for you guys if you want to come.

Speaker (00:22:38) (-) - Out, I'm ready. Let's go.

Speaker (00:22:39) (-) - You know, I can't think of any other large business like this that provides those kinds of activities and things to do. I just want to go get some produce. I can do that. I'm taking the kids over there, the grandkids over there. I can do X, Y, and Z over there and it's just unbelievable.

Speaker (00:22:58) (-) - We go there for pumpkins. Oh, good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. We have a lot of fun getting the pumpkins. Yeah. They have pumpkins everywhere.

Speaker (00:23:05) (-) - We do. We have all kinds of pumpkins and that's the other. That's another fun thing that's changed is people like funky pumpkins now. They like the blue ones and the white ones and the bumpy ones. Okay, so we've definitely we used to just grow orange pumpkins in a lot of different sizes. And now we've started mixing in some of the fun, different varieties that people are just like, I have never seen a blue pumpkin or whatever.

Speaker (00:23:26) (-) - And so it totally makes it.

Speaker (00:23:27) (-) - So you're making blue pumpkins is that you're growing.

Speaker (00:23:30) (-) - There are different seeds for different types of pumpkins.

Speaker (00:23:33) (-) - See, this is amazing to me. And then the like the dwarfing of the apple trees and things like that. This is all unbelievable.

Speaker (00:23:40) (-) - That is all the apple tree thing is really an effort to move to a little bit more of this mechanization that we talked about. The more recent plantings of apple trees are planted closer together, and they are trellis on wire so that the drive aisle is narrower and we have a platform that can drive down that aisle so the guys can prove easier to do that pick from this platform instead of having to lean ladders up to the tree and those sort of things. So that's the way Apple production is going. And our farm guys go to a lot of conferences over the winter to learn about these new techniques and to observe other pruning practices like in Washington State or Michigan or wherever, because it's you are constantly learning about all the different what's the rootstock, what varieties, what techniques, and what works for us in the Midwest is different than what works on the coast.

Speaker (00:24:34) (-) - The varieties are different that thrive here. That's why we don't grow. McIntosh. You probably heard of that cosmic. These varieties that are grown on the coast are not the varieties that perform for us in the Midwest due to our insect pressure, humidity, all those things. So it is a lot of education behind the scenes, which I don't think people understand. They think you just put a tree in the ground and it grows apples, and then you pick it. Oh, there's like quite a lot of that's what I thought. Yeah. And we are fortunate we have an H-2a program. We bring in 60 guys from Mexico to help us with the hand labor. These guys are all trained. Most of them have been coming to Eckhart's for five or more years. So they are very valuable to the production side of our business. And they live on the farm, so they're never late for work. And there you go. You know, they're always there to pick when the days are long and all those things.

Speaker (00:25:21) (-) - There is a lot of hand labor involved with agriculture in our industry that. Versus corn and soybeans. So much can be done by a tractor. So much of ours is hand-picked. Those pumpkins are all hand-picked. Those peaches hand-picked.

Speaker (00:25:34) (-) - I guess that's true.

Speaker (00:25:35) (-) - We're going to dig more into that after the break, and learn more about why Acres is a farm friendly place to just have a great experience. This is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston of Saint Louis In Tune. We'll be right back. This is Arnold Stricker of Saint Louis In Tune on behalf of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation in 1857, the Dred Scott decision was a major legal event and catalyst that contributed to the Civil War. The decision declared that Dred Scott could not be free because he was not a citizen. The 14th Amendment, also called the Dred Scott Amendment, granted citizenship to all born or naturalized here in our country and was intended to overturn the U.S. Supreme Court decision on July 9th, 1868. The Dred Scott Heritage Foundation is requesting a commemorative stamp to be issued from the US Postal Service to recognize and remember the heritage of this amendment by issuing a stamp with the likeness of the man, Dred Scott.

Speaker (00:26:34) (-) - But we need your support and the support of thousands of people who would like to see this happen. To achieve this goal, we ask you to download, sign and share the one page petition with others. To find the petition, please go to Dred Scott Lives. Org and click on the Dred Scott petition. Drive on the right side of the page on behalf of the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation. This has been Arnold Stricker of Saint Louis In Tune.

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Speaker (00:28:30) (-) - Welcome back to Saint Louis In Tune this is Arnold Stricker with Mark Langston. We are salivating here looking at our favorite spring and summer recipe book. And Angie Eckhart is here to continue to talk about that. And Angie on this book. Who's this book written for?

Speaker (00:28:46) (-) - It's really written for any customer purchasing produce from experts. And if you're thinking, oh my gosh, I picked too many strawberries, what should I do by the cookbook? Yeah, there you go.

Speaker (00:28:58) (-) - What else can I do with peaches besides slice them and eat them? So it's really meant to inspire just the everyday person to try something. Maybe they haven't tried with our produce and the recipes are simple, I think. Pretty simple. They don't inquire, require a lot of technical equipment. So the goal was make fresh produce delicious flavors accessible. Let's not make it complicated. Let's just make it fun and and beautiful. And the pictures in this book are absolutely beautiful. The photographer that we worked with, Joy, is just incredible. She used a lot of our some of our vintage dishes in some of the pictures, so that was fun. I got to pull out some of Grandma Eckhart's older dishes in my cabinets, and use those for some of the photos. We had a little bit of nostalgia along the way as we produced produce the images, so.

Speaker (00:29:47) (-) - You don't have to go to the Culinary Institute of America or have all the gadgets to, you know, pull off these recipes.

Speaker (00:29:54) (-) - No, we work a lot of hours and that's farm life.

Speaker (00:29:56) (-) - And I love it. I would have it no other way, but I'm working till five on Saturday. I can't approach a technical recipe. I need something I can put together pretty quick. So most of these recipes are half our assembly kind of thing. Once you've made it a once and you're familiar with it, our goal is my goal is to be able to come home from a long day and still enjoy what I work for, right? Still enjoy those fresh flavors and be able to get it on the dinner table.

Speaker (00:30:24) (-) - For the family.

Speaker (00:30:25) (-) - Right? For family. There's three ladies, young ladies in the front part of the book.

Speaker (00:30:30) (-) - That's us. That's Jill, Sarah and myself.

Speaker (00:30:32) (-) - So those are all the actors. And you're drinking wine. I see we're.

Speaker (00:30:35) (-) - Drinking the peach sangria. We chuckled at this. We're like, we should do this more often. Yeah, we need to sit out in my yard every day and do this. So are you.

Speaker (00:30:42) (-) - Making wine at.

Speaker (00:30:43) (-) - All? So we're not making wine to bottle, but actually hard cider.

Speaker (00:30:47) (-) - The process is considered wine making because basically it's doing the same thing with apples as you would do with grapes. So that's why you are required to get a winery license. So we ferment the apple juice. Then there's the whole process of adding the yeast. Maybe you back sweeten with a little bit of juice. We're learning all this because this is our first year with it. We have learned a lot about yeast and a lot about how to make a true like a cider, because you don't want to add we don't want to add fake things back in to make it taste good. There's some ciders commercially available that that's their gig, right? We want it to be about the fruit and natural processes. So we've been really working on what how do you blend these different fermentation batches and make it yummy.

Speaker (00:31:28) (-) - So I see Eckhart's peach wine I see.

Speaker (00:31:31) (-) - It, yes. So that's being made actually by Grafton Winery for us, which is a partner. They are adjacent to the farm in Grafton, Illinois. So our orchard is next to Grafton Winery's winery production building.

Speaker (00:31:43) (-) - So they're actually making the five Eckert wines. We have one for each of the main fruits strawberry, blackberry, apple, peach. And then they're making a sangria for us. No apple.

Speaker (00:31:53) (-) - Oh, you did say apple. I'm sorry. Okay. You went so fast. Okay.

Speaker (00:31:56) (-) - No asparagus.

Speaker (00:31:58) (-) - No asparagus wine. There are wines that go with asparagus. But, yeah, I would not recommend asparagus wine.

Speaker (00:32:03) (-) - Or. What was the other one? Your husband had the, the horseradish. Horseradish?

Speaker (00:32:08) (-) - No. Horseradish. Definitely not.

Speaker (00:32:09) (-) - There we go. We like the horseradish wine.

Speaker (00:32:11) (-) - Maybe in a Bloody Mary. I don't think it. Wine.

Speaker (00:32:13) (-) - Now, speaking about drinks, you you do have some cocktails in here, which is a new thing, right?

Speaker (00:32:19) (-) - Yeah. This is a fun thing. When we added the cider shed, we started having a lot of seasonal custom drinks in there. And so it was fun to try a peachy mule and a BlackBerry mojito and all these things, really letting the produce shine and even the mixed drinks.

Speaker (00:32:36) (-) - So people are starting to ask for those recipes. So we put about six, I think, in the cookbook of some of the spring and summer seasonal cocktails, and it's just been really fun. Probably the most popular drink in the fall, aside from the apple hard cider, is a cider slushy with some cinnamon schnapps. Just a fun way. You're still enjoying apple cider at Eckhart's, but it's got just a little pop in it. Everyone make it adult friendly. So how.

Speaker (00:33:02) (-) - Could how could you go wrong with apple.

Speaker (00:33:03) (-) - And cinnamon? Yeah, I know, so good. So maybe a.

Speaker (00:33:06) (-) - Scoop of vanilla.

Speaker (00:33:07) (-) - Ice. You can get that to you. You can get a hard cider float. We're just having fun with fruit.

Speaker (00:33:12) (-) - I got to do it again.

Speaker (00:33:17) (-) - So you really need to come over to Eckerd.

Speaker (00:33:18) (-) - This is the fun part of the show. Yeah. Yay! Yay. That is something I didn't even know we were going to go down this road this far.

Speaker (00:33:28) (-) - No, I.

Speaker (00:33:29) (-) - It was just working on the wine or something. Five different ones now.

Speaker (00:33:33) (-) - Or do you make jams and jellies?

Speaker (00:33:36) (-) - So we don't make those on site, but we partner with a lot of producers that bottle our salsa or preserves, applesauce, things like that. If we are. Our business is passionate about being forward facing with the customers. We want the customers to come to the farm and experience agriculture. So all of our expansion has been focused on that versus creating a bottling line to make peach salsa. So we partner with some other farms in the Midwest. That is their business. That's their passion. And so they are doing private label for efforts according to our recipes. And we found we dabbled in that and it is so time consuming. There are so many food safety, a whole nother standard. It's a whole nother business. And it would take up a lot of space. And we want the space to grow the produce. So that's where our passion has led us.

Speaker (00:34:24) (-) - So are these jellies and jam recipes from great grandma back in here or something? Yeah, there.

Speaker (00:34:29) (-) - Are some in the older cookbooks, and we don't have any real preserves or jams and jellies in here, but the older cookbooks definitely have them. There's a lot on our website. Or just email me because I can send you my favorite recipe. I've got a lot that I've tried over the years. you know, I don't make jelly every year, but I try to, you know, make 1 or 2 and usually the skillet, the ones you make in the skillet and I don't can them and do all that, I just might. Yeah. Throw them in a jar and use them out of the fridge. It's just like quicker process.

Speaker (00:34:58) (-) - I was going to ask that because some people really go through the whole process and the jars and the boiling and everything and discuss that quick method. I'm curious.

Speaker (00:35:07) (-) - Our grandparents again were canning because refrigeration was limited. So my grandma had a little cellar in her basement. I had to, as did Ruth Eckert. And they would can all this stuff and put it in the cellar and keep it and use it over the year.

Speaker (00:35:22) (-) - Well, now we all have, what, 2 or 3 fridges in our houses, we have a lot more refrigeration, so we're not as dependent, dependent on that particular method. So if you make like a skillet jam or skillet like just put some strawberry. They'll be recipes for how to do a skillet jam. And then you put it in a clean jar and use it out of your refrigerator. You've got three weeks to use it roughly, so you have to use it, but it gets you all out of all that process of having to sterilize jars and make sure the seal is proper and all those kinds of things, which again, my life is crazy and I love it, but I don't have time to can all that stuff. So I'm going to shoot for the easy button. Still be able to enjoy that fresh, the fresh flavors of the season with time input.

Speaker (00:36:05) (-) - That makes sense. Yeah, you get all those things sterilized and then your child comes up and sneezes.

Speaker (00:36:10) (-) - All over them.

Speaker (00:36:11) (-) - Yeah, or during Covid you couldn't even find the lids. It was like a craziness. So yeah.

Speaker (00:36:16) (-) - Your website is great. It's echo.com experts.com. And you can find out about locations on here, which I was really surprised. I didn't know about the Versailles orchard in Kentucky. And when they open and you also have when you can pick which is it's by each day they have each day comes up. And so there's crop updates at each of the farms. What you can do, you can play at each of the farms, the events that happen in each of the farms. And I didn't know that you had restaurant over there. It's been a while since I've been over there.

Speaker (00:36:49) (-) - Yeah, you have to pick. Yeah. So we're known for fried chicken and like that comfort food is big on the restaurant menu. and then the cider shed has more, like, shareable type food. It's a little bit more modern. My favorite thing is the brisket nachos. It's amazing. It has this cheese drizzled on it that's like beer cheese, but made with our hard cider.

Speaker (00:37:10) (-) - Tell it to stop.

Speaker (00:37:12) (-) - So good. I'm getting a little hungry talking about it.

Speaker (00:37:14) (-) - Wow.

Speaker (00:37:16) (-) - I just had an egg.

Speaker (00:37:17) (-) - Yeah, I.

Speaker (00:37:17) (-) - Now hold on. Where's that audience?

Speaker (00:37:19) (-) - Yeah, check that out. And then, like we talked about that you can get flights of the hard cider. That's super fun. We have this one that's called a plow. It's a board that's four foot long. And it comes with 12 different hard ciders. You can really find out what what flavors do you love? Do you like the drier ciders, the sweeter ciders, the fruitier one. So that's a fun experience. And then there's lots of live music. So there's also a calendar on the website of upcoming concerts and different kinds of styles of music. We have a big stage at the Cider Shed that's outdoors, and so we can accommodate all kinds of groups, sizes of bands, and then there's some awesome spaces to rent. When my daughter graduated from high school, we rented this VIP deck and had her party up there.

Speaker (00:38:00) (-) - It has a private bar, so there's just it's really a flexible space and we're enjoying that. It can accommodate people in a variety of ways.

Speaker (00:38:09) (-) - Now you have to correct me. Were you and your husband high school sweethearts or college sweethearts? High school now, did you not?

Speaker (00:38:15) (-) - At first I thought it was a show off.

Speaker (00:38:18) (-) - Oh, but Johnny Appleseed.

Speaker (00:38:21) (-) - Yes, was voted school apple polisher. Go figure. Oh, no.

Speaker (00:38:26) (-) - School apple polisher.

Speaker (00:38:28) (-) - They. Some like awards for different people. And yeah, he was voted Apple Polish official.

Speaker (00:38:34) (-) - Did he bring apples to the teachers?

Speaker (00:38:36) (-) - Of course. I think he could butter anyone up. He's all for wow.

Speaker (00:38:40) (-) - Okay, so did you ever think that you would be like this, involved in the extent of this magnificent family that has done these things and provides all these activities and wonderful produce for the metropolitan area?

Speaker (00:38:56) (-) - Yeah, I didn't really have a plan that I was going to marry Chris Eckert. But my, you know, one of my first jobs was Eckhart's.

Speaker (00:39:02) (-) - I started working there when I was 15. So and I remember telling my mom, like, cause she's just hiring. And I said, I am not working for Chris Eckhart. Oh, wow. She goes, you're gonna be working for his mom. I don't think you're going to be working for it. Wow. But just over the years, our friend groups overlapped, and then we finally we had been friends for a long time, but we finally started dating the end of our senior year. And then we had both planned to go to University of Illinois. Both our families were big U of I families. Both my parents went there, lots of people in his family. We ended up there together and I was pursuing genetics initially plant genetics, and then I took a horticulture class and just I was like, oh my gosh, this is so fun, so amazing, and had an incredible teacher that just inspired me. And I went down that path. But I was really more on like the botanical path.

Speaker (00:39:52) (-) - So I was interning at the Missouri Botanical Garden, Longwood Gardens out in Philadelphia. I was into landscaping, so I was going to be more on that path. So I started teaching and working for the garden after I graduated with my master's. But I wasn't really seeing Chris because he was working farm hours and I was working nights and off weekends, and I was finally we were just like, this kind of is not good. It's we don't see each other. And so I quit all that and started working for the family with my master's degree for $9 an hour. My dad was like, what? What are you doing? But we really worked on growing the business together. And his sister came back about the same, like a year later, Jill. And then the three of us, along with the high school friend who was like a brother to us, Phil, we were the four that were pushing to grow the business and do some different things. And so that's what we did. We had head down, get the work done, put the blood, sweat and tears in and grow the business.

Speaker (00:40:48) (-) - And I was motivated to grow it so I could afford to have managers so that we could then have a little bit more stable lifestyle, or be silly and try to grow something else which required more time. I get addicted to the just seeing things grow. I mean, we like plants that grow and we like businesses that grow and staffs that grow and yeah, are there.

Speaker (00:41:08) (-) - And maybe you can't tell us, are there things out on the horizon that you have planned?

Speaker (00:41:13) (-) - I'm sure there's always things on the horizon. We spend a lot of our capital budget on plants, like it's the next planting. And so Chris and the farm guys have the next five years of planting mapped out. And you do have to order these trees in advance. So if we want, we might want crisp trees and we want a certain rootstock on it. And we're going to have to hire a nursery to start growing those three years out so that they can couple the rootstock with the top of the tree. And so you're thinking so far ahead and you've got to know where that plant's going to.

Speaker (00:41:46) (-) - That planting is going to go, how many acres, what needs to be in that ground now to prepare the soil for the planting? Do we need to do any kind of terracing or laser leveling? There's a lot that goes into before you plant, so we definitely have a lot of plants on the horizon of the new year, always pulling out things that are aging out, and the apple tree is 25 ish years. So really we're planting pretty much every year to maintain. and then the other thing that's on the horizon is expanding entertainment at Belleville. So we really want to have things in the summer for families other than just peach picking. it's hot. So we're, you know, just trying what what kind of outdoor activities would be fun for families again, to extend that visit, allow them to do more when they're on the farm. If you're going to drive an hour from Saint Louis to come over today, it took me like 30 minutes to get here. So that's not a big deal. But a lot of our customers are coming from or West Saint Louis, so we want to have more for them to do so they can spend the day, enjoy that activity on the farm.

Speaker (00:42:47) (-) - So how do the trees pollinate? Do you have to have different apple trees close to each other, or it just has to be the same varietal near each other?

Speaker (00:42:56) (-) - How does apples need to be mixed up in terms of variety? So we usually have set number of rows of trees of one variety and then another in the alternate. So you won't have all your Honeycrisp together. Okay. And we do that for pollination. We also do that because if we're going to drop off people in the orchard to pick, they usually don't want to just pick one kind. So they might want to pick a green apple and a red apple. So we'll alternate Golden Delicious and Fuji or whatever it might be. So that helps with pollination as well as the customer demand. So years ago we. He brought in bees to help pollinate, specifically strawberries, pumpkins and apples. Peach kind of self pollinate. But over the years, we've learned how to be better stewards of the land, use more specific controls for insects. And not just 40 years ago, you sprayed one thing on the trees to kill everything, and that would also inhibit pollinators.

Speaker (00:43:52) (-) - Now, the treatments are very specific and the chemicals are very different so that you're not harming pollinators. And you also allow more weeds to grow around your farm so that there's more food for pollinators, which getting a German person to grow weeds on their farm is really challenging. I'm not trying to be talked down, but we are very German and we like to most of so.

Speaker (00:44:18) (-) - Pull that thing, tried pull that weed out. Yeah.

Speaker (00:44:21) (-) - We like tidy. So leaving weeds grow. It's been a little bit of a challenge for the family, but we're trying to embrace that because that can be habitat for colony for native pollinators. The honeybees are not native. So you were we were stressing bringing them into an environment they're not adapted to and can be stressful for that. So we're relying on a lot of natural pollination.

Speaker (00:44:42) (-) - One last question here is if anybody goes over there and they want to see from beginning to end production, in other words, most people, they go to the store or they go to a farmer's market and they'll just get the fruit or the vegetables and they don't understand because as you're explaining this, the complicated process, the blood, sweat and tears that goes into this, that it's just not, oh, you plant a tree.

Speaker (00:45:09) (-) - As I remember planting for apple trees where we used to live, and they were a couple different kinds. And then one produced a couple apples and it was like, okay, this was five years later. That was a big waste of time. Yeah. But how much goes into this? Do you have something that takes people like a history of this is how this works.

Speaker (00:45:27) (-) - So we are working on something now. It's a video compilation and we'll be putting a big screen TV in what we call the Orchard Room in Belville. That's the room where you go in. It has all the fruit that whatever's in season, it's just in our store because we have been filming over the last year, all the different things we do to the crops. And so it'll be like a reel that just keeps growing. We also share a lot of that stuff on our Facebook and Instagram will our marketing team will go out and just video, you know, the guys covering strawberries, because we do have to cover them with a blanket.

Speaker (00:46:01) (-) - You know, when there's really cold temperatures in the winter. So people wouldn't know that they sometimes people drive by and go, what's that white thing out in the field? They'll call us and ask. But so we've tried to take those questions that we get and film little segments about them. But if people are interested, we do try to put the behind the scenes on Facebook and Instagram, and then this video will be playing in the store. Our field supervisors, when you go out to pick, a lot of times they can tell you about the crops, anyone in the store. A lot of those people are very passionate and educated, and you can see a little bit of the stuff in the cider shed. You can see our packing line where we pack all the fruit. That's a whole nother show. But it's it's really a cool thing to see this computer select and sort out all the fruit that we pack into the peach boxes and different things like that. And then you can see the cider press where we actually make the sweet cider at Belleville, if you're sitting in the cider shed, you can see the machine that presses all the apples.

Speaker (00:46:55) (-) - And we use a heat pasteurization on that, which is so cool because you don't have to add any stabilizers, any artificial ingredients. We used to have to add potassium sorbate to preserve our cider, but now we're using this new press that heat pasteurized. So the only ingredient in apple cider is apples. That is it. And then we have a strawberry cider right now that just has strawberries and apples. So it's really clean, really pure. We have been super excited with that whole process. So you can see that as well.

Speaker (00:47:25) (-) - I don't want to say that people are naive to what goes on, but you go to the store, especially youth, they go to the store and it just didn't fall out of the sky into the store. Oh, right. And you really have to understand what goes into it. Planting, five years out, planting, getting everything going to the ground ready, making sure that there's pollinators, making sure that you're dealing with the weather which is out of your control except for covering up when there's going to be frost or something.

Speaker (00:47:49) (-) - And all the food safety, we didn't even touch on that. But there's a lot of food safety that goes into packing the produce that we can track it back to the orchard it was picked in. Oh well, that's all really important. So every box that's packed for wholesale, like the ones we send to Schnucks, will have where it was picked, specific information. So all of that has to be tracked by a computer. We have the whole control room. It looks like this. but that's where all the information comes from. The packing line. It's taking 60 pictures of every piece of fruit as it goes over the belt and deciding where it needs to kick out, and then it kicks out on a line. It's getting hand packed into a box. And then that stickers going on the box so that no matter what, we can trace that item back. So there's a lot of auditing that goes on the farm to make sure the practices are safe. And food safety is a huge, you know, priority, right? We have a third party come in and audit that.

Speaker (00:48:39) (-) - That's important. And we we really want to have good, fresh, safe food in this market.

Speaker (00:48:45) (-) - No kidding. Sounds like the seventh generation of experts has been busy.

Speaker (00:48:49) (-) - We have. And we're.

Speaker (00:48:50) (-) - Really excited to see the eighth.

Speaker (00:48:51) (-) - Generation coming.

Speaker (00:48:54) (-) - It really.

Speaker (00:48:54) (-) - Does. So Katie and.

Speaker (00:48:55) (-) - Jack get ready.

Speaker (00:48:56) (-) - Are they as excited about getting involved with the.

Speaker (00:49:00) (-) - Yeah, I think so. They're just Jack's been really working with my husband on the farm side. It's just so exciting to have somebody new and energized. He's really taken over the drone program. We had to get his pilot license and learn how to do all that kind of stuff. But you can fertilize crops with the drone now, and so that's been awesome. We do that with strawberries and pumpkins, and then Katie works with me in the store, and she does the schedule and is in charge of making sure all the shifts are filled and shelves are full and all that kind of stuff. So it's been exciting. I think our goal was to hand it off and to hope it sustains for the next generation.

Speaker (00:49:33) (-) - So this summer we're having a family reunion because we have a lot of family in Texas, in California, and they have kids that are in their 20s. And so we're going to have this family reunion and talk about job opportunities at efforts. Who knows if anyone will bite, but we want them to feel welcome to come into the business and join the team. And I also, our team is made up of a lot of non-family people that are like family to us. We really do look at our team as an extension of our family, because we couldn't do what we do without them, and lots of people stay a long time at Eckhart's, which is awesome. You end up with just this human knowledge and a human capital kind of thing, so we're grateful for that. To to have a lot of non-family members managing and leading departments.

Speaker (00:50:15) (-) - And I know the memories from Eckhart's are amazing. Absolutely. Both of my boys took their one of their first dates over to Ecuador, and they come home with these bags of work and mom, look what I got.

Speaker (00:50:27) (-) - I had a great time.

Speaker (00:50:28) (-) - Mom has to make apple pie.

Speaker (00:50:30) (-) - I know, that's right, that's right. And it is. And the tradition is there. It's been there so long. Yeah.

Speaker (00:50:35) (-) - We love that part so much.

Speaker (00:50:37) (-) - Yeah.

Speaker (00:50:37) (-) - The book is Eckhart's our favorites. Spring and summer recipes peach berry, corn, tomato and more. And the book is available at Reading Press. I'm sure it's available on your website. Yes. Dot com.

Speaker (00:50:49) (-) - And at the Orchard.

Speaker (00:50:50) (-) - At the Bill.

Speaker (00:50:51) (-) - Ball location and in for sales Kentucky. And then it'll be at the other locations when they open later.

Speaker (00:50:56) (-) - Yeah. Angie, thanks for coming on Saint Louis and we appreciate it.

Speaker (00:50:59) (-) - It was fun.

Speaker (00:51:00) (-) - This is great. Okay.

Speaker (00:51:02) (-) - You can stick around here. We have a couple things. I don't know if Mark has some of his days of the day.

Speaker (00:51:08) (-) - Yeah, there's a couple. Let's see. Healthy kids day the last day of Passover. Hairstyle appreciation day costume. I'll use that. I know you should, Arnold.

Speaker (00:51:23) (-) - It's. it's national Bugs Bunny day. I don't know if you're a fan of Bugs Bunny. Let's see. Have you ever heard of bubble tea?

Speaker (00:51:33) (-) - Oh, yes. My daughter loves.

Speaker (00:51:35) (-) - Bubble.

Speaker (00:51:35) (-) - Bubble tea. Is that. It's national bubble tea. What is bubble tea?

Speaker (00:51:38) (-) - She probably knew that. I didn't see her this morning because she was still asleep. But I.

Speaker (00:51:42) (-) - Bet she knows.

Speaker (00:51:43) (-) - That. Creamy, sweet tea.

Speaker (00:51:45) (-) - Yeah, it.

Speaker (00:51:45) (-) - Has these, like, a.

Speaker (00:51:46) (-) - Little tropical.

Speaker (00:51:47) (-) - Like open like tapioca.

Speaker (00:51:48) (-) - Balls. Yeah. Okay.

Speaker (00:51:49) (-) - Corner 17 on Delmar is where I'd recommend bubble tea, but she probably has four other places she would recommend to.

Speaker (00:51:56) (-) - Never heard of it. No, but there's a national day.

Speaker (00:51:59) (-) - For ask.

Speaker (00:51:59) (-) - Any 16 year old girl and she will know.

Speaker (00:52:03) (-) - About national bubble tea. There you are.

Speaker (00:52:04) (-) - I don't know about the day, but they'll know bubble tea.

Speaker (00:52:06) (-) - Well, yeah.

Speaker (00:52:07) (-) - I never knew. It's a oatmeal cookie day. I know you like oatmeal cookies.

Speaker (00:52:11) (-) - That's right, a National Raisin Day. They don't. They're going to probably look at raisins at Eckhart's. I'm not sure. Yeah, there's a few more therapy. Animal day, National tabby day. We have a couple of tabbies at our house. Tabbies are the best. And then your favorite National Tie-Dye day. Oh, yeah, I heard about that for a long time.

Speaker (00:52:31) (-) - Yeah, that goes back. You blew.

Speaker (00:52:32) (-) - That one. No tie dye shirts here.

Speaker (00:52:35) (-) - Oh, you did all right. This is just a few of the.

Speaker (00:52:38) (-) - Of the day of the day. I have some jokes about apples that will rock you to your core. Oh. Why did the apple pie go to the dentist?

Speaker (00:52:49) (-) - I'm not sure.

Speaker (00:52:50) (-) - Because it needed a filling.

Speaker (00:52:53) (-) - Oh, when.

Speaker (00:52:54) (-) - Is an apple grouchy?

Speaker (00:52:57) (-) - I don't know.

Speaker (00:52:57) (-) - When it's a crab apple.

Speaker (00:53:00) (-) - Oh, God.

Speaker (00:53:02) (-) - What's worse than finding a worm in your apple? Finding half a worm.

Speaker (00:53:07) (-) - That's right. I agree.

Speaker (00:53:10) (-) - What do you call an apple that plays the trumpet?

Speaker (00:53:12) (-) - Oh, sorry, I don't know.

Speaker (00:53:14) (-) - A tutti frutti.

Speaker (00:53:16) (-) - Okay, that is a.

Speaker (00:53:20) (-) - What do you call two apples next to each other? a pear. Yeah. Let's see here. Why did the apple pie cry? Don't know. It's peelings were hurt.

Speaker (00:53:41) (-) - That's just not right.

Speaker (00:53:42) (-) - And I guess we'll close with this one.

Speaker (00:53:44) (-) - Yes, please.

Speaker (00:53:45) (-) - Yes, yes.

Speaker (00:53:47) (-) - What's, what's in an Egyptian apple pie?

Speaker (00:53:52) (-) - I.

Speaker (00:53:52) (-) - Don't, I I'm.

Speaker (00:53:55) (-) - Not the kind mummy used to make.

Speaker (00:53:58) (-) - There you go. She's bad. Very bad.

Speaker (00:54:02) (-) - Okay, check that book out, folks. It's. Man. Like I said at the beginning, I just wanted to rip the cover off and eat it.

Speaker (00:54:12) (-) - It looks.

Speaker (00:54:13) (-) - Delectable. So that's all for this hour. We thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can listen to additional shows at stlintune.com. Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, Pod Chaser, or your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners and continue to grow. I want to thank Bob Berthesel for our theme music co-host, Mark Langston, and we thank you for being a part of our community of curious minds.

Speaker (00:54:37) (-) - Saint Louis In Tune is a production of Motif Media Group and the US Radio Network. Remember to keep seeking, keep learning, walk worthy and let your light shine for Saint Louis In Tune I'm Arnold Stricker.