CONCRETE, Wash. — Griffin Berger grew up in Seattle, where his family had a few fruit trees.

“In the backyard we had an apple tree, peach tree and pear tree. In the front yard we had another peach tree. Kids in our neighborhood had lemonade stands in the summer but I had a fruit stand,” Berger said. “When the fruit ripened, my dad built a little wood stand for me. I fell in love with growing fruit at a young age — the excitement of growing food, picking it and selling it to my neighbors at a good price to raise money for school and sports.”

Then one year the peach tree died. “The leaves curled up and it didn’t come back the next spring, and I was very upset,” he said. “This stimulated me to go into plant sciences and learn more.”

When he was in middle school his parents moved to Mount Vernon in northwestern Washington state. They purchased some land in 2007 near the tiny town of Concrete in the Skagit Valley, near the North Cascades National Park. It had been a cattle farm and they began transforming it into an orchard.

“We spent summer weekends putting in infrastructure and irrigation, and tore out old buildings. I went to high school in Mount Vernon, then to Washington State University and got my degree in integrated plant science. After graduating I began farming full-time with my parents, taking care of apples,” Berger said.

Every other year or so they planted more acres. “We built it from nothing, as a family project,” he said.

The Sauk Farm is named after the mountain that overlooks it. It is a certified organic farm, using regenerative organic practices.

“We use a lot of compost, cover crops and do a lot of foliar and nutritional testing/soil testing,” Berger said. “We also monitor insects — both beneficial insects and pests — and time our treatments so we don’t hurt the beneficial insect population at sensitive times in their life cycle.”

The orchard grows primarily dessert apples for fresh eating, and some for juice and dried fruit.

These desirable high-quality apples include Honeycrisp, Cosmic Crisp, Ambrosia, Crimson Crisp, EverCrisp and Winecrisp.

They originally had peaches and grapes, but took them out and planted those parcels to Evercrisp apples.

“Now we have less machinery to maintain and more room in our barns for equipment. Our employees are happier because they don’t have to prune and pull grapes,” Berger said.

Sauk Farm sells fresh fruit in more than 100 stores between Washington and California.

“Besides the fresh sales in local markets we now have some value-added products. We have our own food-processing facility and make juice, dried fruit, powders (nutritional supplements) and a baby food puree,” he said. “We have apple puree and an apple-blueberry puree with blueberries we source from the Rodale Institute — our neighbors just down the road,” Berger said.

“It has been great to do the value-added products because it enables us to have a stable year-round income, and a brand associated with our farm,” Berger said.

“With fresh produce, a lot of farms’ apples get mixed in with apples being sourced. You lose the brand identity and it’s also more seasonal. With value-added products people start to associate them with us and look for those,” he said.

“We recently learned that we are finalists in two of the drink and snack categories for our apples and our apple cider for the Good Food Award. The award ceremony will be April 29th. This is the first time we’ve entered, so we are very excited,” he said.

“We also do custom processing for 10 other farms in Washington. If a farmer wants to make a pepper powder or juice of some kind, I walk them through the steps to a finished product. I help them make the food safety plan, etc. and get all the licensing done. Then they can have a year-round stable income for their farm with a product that is affordable for the consumer.”