It all started when our parents planted 20 apple trees behind the house in 1969. During the '70's and '80's some of us went on to other careers and others stayed to farm. The orchards grew to more than 300 acres, planted with many varieties of apples and pears. In 1999 family members who had gone off to careers involving technology, writing and graphic arts in the '80's got together with our orcharding siblings and started FruitFromWashington.com. Our Dad, D.R. Eberhart provided the corporation, D.R. Eberhart & Associates, Inc.

In 2004, FruitFromWashington.com celebrated it's fifth anniversary as an Internet business. We received some nice publicity for the endeavor, through Real Simple Magazine and various Northwest farm and orchard publications around this time. Neither the "dot com" boom nor its bust had much impact one way or the other on our online fruit sales. We just plugged along, peddling fruit during harvest and holidays; enjoying the contacts we made through fruit subscription sales, corporate gifts and individual orders. Then, one by one, the family members who had come together for this enterprise, drifted off to work on other projects or pursue other interests. Our neighbors, Kelly and Nena Kukes were running a successful direct farmer's market business that seemed well suited to what we'd begun under the FruitFromWashington.com banner. For two years, from 2005 until harvest of 2007, Kukes Orchard, aka The Little Apple Knocker, was the seasonal purveyor of gift boxes of Washington grown apples raised in their Kittitas Valley orchard. However the good folks there determined that they needed to concentrate on their farmer-market operation. Look for The Little Apple Knocker of Ellensburg, Washington in the Seattle area Farmers' Markets every Fall.

So in October, 2007, FruitFromWashington.com made arrangements to refer customers looking for harvest and holiday gift boxes of Washington Apples and Pears to contact Big Apple Country & Gifts, another decades old, multi-generational, Kittitas Valley family-run fruit operation. Big Apple offers a selection of fruit varieties as well as country gifts. Their fruit stand and shop is located on the south Canyon Road in Ellensburg, Washington. Be sure to stop by if you're ever in the neighborhood!

Find out more about us: The People. Or see What's New on the FruitFromWashington.com site for this month.