An apple story: The true meaning of Christmas

A special delivery of fresh apples — a whole lot of apples —  helps residents in need

This is a story about apples. Lots of apples. Enough apples to make more pies than you can eat in a few lifetimes.

Eugene Triplett’s role in the tale began early on a Friday the week before Thanksgiving. He’s long been a mainstay in regional charities, including on the board of the Northern Piedmont Community Foundation and as volunteer pharmacist for the Free Clinic of Culpeper. He’s also associate minister at Rising Zion Baptist Church in Winston, Va.

But on that morning, Triplett was largely serving in another capacity — as chair of the board of the Wayland Blue Ridge Baptist Association that includes some Rappahannock churches.

He and Pastor Willie Crenshaw, Jr., of the Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Orange, and Herman Jenkins, Triplett’s nephew, met at the association’s center in Rixeyville with a simple purpose: Pick up a delivery of apples.

Triplett and Crenshaw had learned that a large supply of apples had become available, and they were interested in getting some of the free fruit for the association’s churches and regional food pantries.

So they waited for what they assumed would be a pickup truck with a load of apples in back. 

Not long after 8 a.m., a truck arrived. It was bright green. It also had 18 wheels.

“I’m thinking, ‘Wow, that’s a big truck,’“ recounts Crenshaw. “I asked the driver, ‘How many of these are ours?’ And he said, ‘All of them.’”

All meaning: 32 pallets, each one holding 56 boxes of red and golden Delicious, Fuji and Rome apples, almost 1,800 boxes.

The trio plunged in, and with the help of a pallet jack, they were able to empty the truck in two hours. 

Boom, then bust?

So, where did all the apples come from? West Virginia.

Apple growers there, as in many states, saw early this fall that they were going to have a lot of fruit to sell, much as they did last year. The problem was that the companies that process apples were still well-stocked and weren’t in the market for another large crop.

That meant a potential financial disaster for growers, who had to consider not taking on the expense of harvesting their apples, and instead letting them rot on the ground.

But, with a push from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), the United States Department of Agriculture and the West Virginia Department of Agriculture came up with funding to help farmers cover the cost of harvesting and packing their fruit. 

The one stipulation: The apples had to be distributed to hunger-fighting charities and organizations, mainly in West Virginia and nearby states. 

The government money, however, wouldn’t pay for that part. 

Enter The Farmlink Project, a national nonprofit launched in 2020 with the goal of connecting farmers to food banks. It kicked in $1 million and began gearing up for what would be its biggest food rescue to date–16 million pounds of apples.

Come and get them

Carla Cash recalls that she started hearing about a potential windfall of apples in September. She’s  executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Food Resilience and Access Coalition (MAFRAC), and a key part of her job is coordinating efforts to link unsold farm products to places where people in need can find them.

Not much happened for weeks. Cash started to think the big apple giveaway might not happen. 

But by late October, it was back on track, and on the weekly phone call MAFRAC has with food banks and food relief organizations in the region, people were told a lot of apples would soon be available. 

One immediate challenge was to find food banks with loading docks that could handle large trucks. There aren’t many.

Lining up those trucks, meanwhile, fell to another link in the food relief network, the Society of St. Andrews. “The amount of apples is even hard to imagine,” said Brenda Mahan, program coordinator for the society’s Delmarva region.

Each tractor trailer carried about 20 tons of apples, according to Mahan. She estimated that the trucks she scheduled for drop-offs in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia transported a total of 450 tons. 

A big, green truck

That included the big green tractor-trailer that surprised Triplett and Crenshaw that November morning at the Wayland Center.

“We were asked if we wanted a truckload of apples,” said Triplett. “We weren’t thinking a semi truck.”

Both Triplett and Crenshaw acknowledge that they didn’t know where the apples had come from. Their focus was more on getting word out in the community about the stacks of fruit sitting in front of them.

They reached out to churches and food banks and told people to come and pick up whatever they could. That included a handful of Rappahannock churches and the Rappahannock Food Pantry, although the latter had to decline the offer because it already had a good supply of apples and no room to store more. 

Triplett also contacted Jill Skelton, food manager for Empowering Culpeper, a program of People inc. He knew she was well-connected with food relief operations throughout the area. 

“We have 70 members on our list,” she said. “

Food programs, food distributors. All I did was plug into that. It was me just putting out the word that Wayland Blue Ridge Baptist Association has apples. Tons of apples.”

A steady stream of cars and trucks pulled into the Wayland Center that weekend. By Sunday night, all the apples were gone.

Community effort

Triplett made a point of dropping off 10 bushels of apples at the Free Clinic of Culpeper. He stacked them in the lobby and patients were invited to help themselves.

“They were thrilled beyond belief,” said Tammy LaGraffe, the clinic’s director. “Our patients have to meet certain income guidelines, and they’re pretty low. A lot of them really struggle with food insecurity, 

“Something like this is just amazing,” she added. “They were incredibly grateful. This was huge for us.”

For her part, Skelton found the experience particularly satisfying, especially how it all came together in such a short period of time.

‘You know, it was how a community is supposed to work,” she said. “You know, where programs and neighbors call each other and we all pitch in. 

“That was the neatest thing about it. It really was what a community is all about.”

Foothills Forum is an independent, community-supported nonprofit tackling the need for in-depth research and reporting on Rappahannock County issues.

The group has an agreement with Rappahannock Media, owner of the Rappahannock News, to present this series and other award-winning reporting projects. More at foothillsforum.org.