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Family at the core of California farmstand

food | travel

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

February 22, 2012|By Ellen Albanese

Lloyd Bunch makes the filling for pies and turnovers. (ELLEN ALBANESE FOR THE BOSTON…)

MURPHYS, Calif. - Once they were in their 80s, the Darby brothers, Lloyd and Ken, found they could no longer run the Red Apple. Around 2005, they all but closed the orchard/farmstand/bakery on Highway 4 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which had been in the family since their grandfather planted the first apple trees in 1903. For the next few years the shop opened intermittently for a few hours at a time around holidays.

Sixty-five miles away, in Hughson, a small farming city in the Central Valley, Lloyd and Chris Bunch were trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives after both lost teaching jobs within a year of each other. Lloyd was a high school agriculture teacher and Chris taught fourth grade. They lived on an almond farm and also grew peaches, nectarines, plums, apricots, and cherries. “Why don’t you talk to the Darbys about reopening the Red Apple?’’ urged Lloyd’s brother Gerald, who had a mountain cabin nearby and recalled how popular the spot had been in its heyday. “That place would be perfect for you.’’

As Lloyd Bunch tells the story, “I drove up to Murphys to talk to Lloyd Darby, and at the end of the day we had a handshake agreement.’’ He and Chris would lease and run the business. Adds his wife, “I thought he was crazy, but I thought it was the best crazy idea he’d had so far. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to make pies.’’

The Red Apple is back in business. Tourists on their way to Calaveras County wineries or Big Trees State Park stop in for apples, cider, pastries, vegetables, honey, and doughnuts. The locals come for pies - apple, fruit, and nut creations made from Chris’s family recipes.

Chris made her first pie when she was 12 years old and boasts that she has never in her life bought a pie or a pie crust. She makes every pie at the Red Apple from scratch, hand rolling the dough. In a typical weekend she sells 100, but sales can approach 300 before a holiday. The apple filling is Lloyd’s specialty, says Chris, perfected after much experimentation with different apple varieties and spices.

Apple doughnuts and apple butter come from the Darby family. Before he died, Chris said, Ken Darby gave them his doughnut recipe and even came in to show them how to use the doughnut dropper, a contraption that shapes doughnuts and drops them into the hot oil.

“The first week we opened, people were lined up to get doughnuts,’’ Lloyd says. “On Labor Day weekend we made 7,000 doughnuts - of just one kind!’’ With that volume, the fryers are going nonstop, so when people buy a doughnut, it’s usually still warm.