By Edie Grossfield

Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN 

With 50 acres of rolling land in Mazeppa, Vince Steffen tends to roughly 6,000 apple trees on his Apple Ridge Orchard. The Iowa native and his wife bought the orchard 33 years ago, building their house and orchard buildings on the property.

The apple-buying season is almost over, but Steffen still has a lot of different varieties to sell in his orchard store. This year has been a challenging one for apple growers, to say the least: The trees bloomed late; June and July were cold and dry; September was hot; and October brought snow. Steffen still harvested a good crop of most apple varieties, of which he has 27, but he said 2009 serves to remind people just how much farmers depend on the weather.

With the apple season winding down, what work needs to be done on the orchard?

We're preparing to finish picking, and we're preparing to put out mouse bait and guards on the trees. We'll probably be doing some spraying for dandelions a little later, after all the fruit that we want to keep has been taken off the trees.

You said mouse bait?

Yeah, the bait is usually put around the tree so the mice do not girdle the tree -- chew the bark off in the winter, which would kill the tree. Plus, we have plenty of cats around here that help to take care of the mouse problem.

Are mice a big problem on the orchard?

They're one of the rodents that can give you a lot of problems. Pocket gophers can, too, if you get too many in the orchard. They eat the roots during the wintertime.

What other tasks are you doing in the fall?

Well, I get to book work that I put off for two or three months during the harvest, and then we move on to cutting down trees that we're not going to keep anymore. And we're pruning trees all winter long.

You're pruning trees all winter long? Are you doing anything else during the winter here?

Well, about six or eight hours outside in Minnesota winter is more than enough to do in the wintertime every day. We'll be doing that from about Jan. 1 on. We have about 6,000 trees, so it takes me that long to get through them all by the end of March or the first part of April.

Do you work alone?

Well, my wife Ann helps. She's a teacher in Pine Island. She helps us out a lot. And we have four grown children, and on weekends during the busy time, they come down and help us take care of the sales room and keep people pleased and welcomed.

Do you enjoy operating the orchard?

Yes, I enjoy working outside. Even in the cold winters, I like being outside -- you can hear the hawks and blue jays calling out. And in the summertime, too, you get to hear all the animals. This is a great place to raise a family. I enjoy outside work. I don't care to sit in a chair too much, or in a cubicle.

Know an interesting person willing to spend 15 minutes talking with a reporter in exchange for 15 minutes of fame? Call Edie Grossfield at 285-7635, or e-mail Post-Bulletin, Rochester MN .

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