Apples from Yesterday to Tomorrow
Aug 3, 2026 · 12 min · 9 segments
The picture above is of the Columbia River in Wentachee, Washington. I took a trip there last month. Even thought it wasn’t time for apples yet, I got to learn first hand why Washington grows so many…
Eric SamuelsonHost
So growing up in the Midwest, not knowing much about the Pacific Northwest, other than cities like Seattle and Portland, and what you see depicted on TV that Seattle and Washington are just some area filled with pine trees and just rains all the time, and they drink coffee, and that's what we think of Washington.
But a good portion of the state, a whole eastern part of Washington, is not like that at all.
I looked into the information to get, like, what type of classification you would call that eastern part of Washington where all the apples are grown, and it is referred to as being semi-arid.
It's a v- It's an area that does get some moisture, b- you know, more than you'd get in, like, a desert, a, like, flat-out desert climate, but still a very dry area.
So once I started learning that about Washington, I started questioning, I'm like, "Wait a minute.
Besides the trees themselves, the fruit trees, there's green grass and there's plenty of green trees and it's, it's a green, greener environment 'cause it, 'cause it rains at a average amount.
It doesn't rain all the time, but it, but it rains steady enough to provide for the fruit trees, and so, what they need.
But then thinking, looking at, looking at what Washington, the east looked like, it was like, "This is where the apples are grown, really?" Like, I vision it in my mind over the years to be very different than it actually was in reality.
I've learned this over the last couple years really, coming up to the Northwest, that things were not that, not like I had thought.
So growing up in the Midwest, not knowing much about the Pacific Northwest, other than cities like Seattle and Portland, and what you see depicted on TV that Seattle and Washington are just some area filled with pine trees and just rains all the time, and they drink coffee, and that's what we think of Washington.
But a good portion of the state, a whole eastern part of Washington, is not like that at all.
I looked into the information to get, like, what type of classification you would call that eastern part of Washington where all the apples are grown, and it is referred to as being semi-arid.
It's a v- It's an area that does get some moisture, b- you know, more than you'd get in, like, a desert, a, like, flat-out desert climate, but still a very dry area.
So once I started learning that about Washington, I started questioning, I'm like, "Wait a minute.
Besides the trees themselves, the fruit trees, there's green grass and there's plenty of green trees and it's, it's a green, greener environment 'cause it, 'cause it rains at a average amount.
It doesn't rain all the time, but it, but it rains steady enough to provide for the fruit trees, and so, what they need.
But then thinking, looking at, looking at what Washington, the east looked like, it was like, "This is where the apples are grown, really?" Like, I vision it in my mind over the years to be very different than it actually was in reality.
I've learned this over the last couple years really, coming up to the Northwest, that things were not that, not like I had thought.
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