Apple Annie's Orchard

Before anyone picks at the Hardy Road orchard, each party checks in at the sales area. Staff hand over a map of where picking is open that day, a list of what is ripe, and the prices. Rows ready for harvest carry a sign naming the crop. A row without a sign is not ready. At the end, the fruit is weighed and paid for by the pound. Sampling from the tree is allowed, and the farm asks pickers to share a large piece rather than waste it. In the farm’s words, “Nothing bothers Annie more than finding huge peaches lying on the ground with a single bite taken out of them!”

Apple Annie’s runs three places around Willcox, in Cochise County: the fruit orchard on Hardy Road, a vegetable and pumpkin farm on Williams Road, and a country store beside I-10. They sit at 4,300 feet in the Sulphur Springs Valley. “We have warm days, but cool nights,” Mandy Kirkendall, the founders’ daughter, told KGUN 9. “So the fruit does really well.” Both farms open in July and close on October 31 each year. By then, the farm says, the weather has grown cooler and the first hard freeze has often come. Admission and parking are free. The farms stay open in rain, monsoon storms and wind, but wagon rides stop when there is lightning nearby. To reach the orchard, take Exit 340 off I-10 and go west on Fort Grant Road 5.5 miles to the Apple Annie’s sign, then turn right on Nickels Road and follow the apple signs.

Apples, donuts and the Orchard Grill

In mid-August 2026 the orchard listed Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Jonathan, Braeburn and Ambrosia apples, along with peaches, plums, pluots, Bartlett pears and Asian pears. On weekends the Orchard Grill serves applewood-smoked burgers and a pancake breakfast whose topping follows the season: peach in summer, apple during the harvest weeks, apple pie filling on the My-Oh-My Apple Pie Weekend. The orchard bakery sells pie by the slice, apple bread, fudge and apple cider donuts. The farm invites visitors to “watch as our donuts are deep fried and then smothered in cinnamon and sugar.” The 2026 calendar set aside October 3 and 4 as a special weekend for those donuts. Apple Annie’s Attic, the country gift shop, is also at the orchard. During the craft fair of September 26 and 27, 2026, more than 30 vendors filled the grounds.

The orchard’s summer runs on other fruit. The farm bills its cherry season, about two weeks long, as the only you-pick cherry picking in Arizona. During the Taste of Summer weekends it sells chamoy with peach or watermelon slushies and fruit bowls dusted with Tajín.

Pumpkins and a 600,000-stalk maze on Williams Road

The produce farm lies 11.5 miles out Fort Grant Road, just off Williams Road. Matt Holcomb and his wife, Alicia, grow more than 125 acres of vegetables there. The Fall Pumpkin Celebration of 2026 ran September 26 through October 31, with pumpkins picked off the vine, weekend hayrides out to the patch, and a field of cut-your-own sunflowers. The corn maze opened September 19. It covers 12.5 acres and more than 600,000 stalks, with a simple route for families with small children, a medium path, and a hard course. The 2026 design marks 40 years of Apple Annie’s. On October weekends a food truck serves lunch at the farm, and the kettle corn stand moves over from the orchard.

Summer at the farm brings sweet corn, sold by the half dozen, the “farmer’s dozen,” or the five-dozen sack. In 2026 it ran July 11 through Labor Day weekend and was roasted on weekends, buttered and seasoned to order. On the Monsoon Watermelon weekends, a buyer who guesses the exact weight of a melon takes it home free. At the Green Chili Roast, any 50-pound burlap sack of green chiles is roasted free in the farm’s own roaster, and visitors may first taste mild, medium and hot. Tamale corn sells in five-dozen burlap bags. The fields also yield okra, black-eye peas and broccoli.

Pie and apple bread at the old cider mill

The Country Store, at 1510 N. Circle I Road, is the one location open all year. It occupies the old Stout’s Cider Mill building, which the farm calls a Willcox landmark. The family bought it in the winter of 2013, renovated it for months, and opened the store in May 2013. Mandy Kirkendall and her husband, David, run it. According to the farm, the smell of baked pie “permeates the building” as soon as the door opens.

The pies are nine inches across, with crusts made in small batches and crimped by hand: apple, apple crumb, apple cherry, apple rhubarb and pecan, plus peach, peach crumb, pumpkin and sugar-free apple in season. The Arizona Daily Star reported that Annie created the pie recipe in 1986. “We hand peel the apples. Everything’s made from scratch,” Mandy told KGUN 9, adding that the business sold about 500 pies a day, all year round. The apple bread, which the farm calls its signature product, follows a recipe Matt “invented” at age 8: chunks of fresh-peeled apple, walnut or pecan pieces, and a hint of cinnamon. Fudge sits by the register in half-pound blocks, in flavors such as maple nut, orange cream and raspberry nut, and sometimes pumpkin or apple cider donut. On weekdays from 11:00 to 1:00 the store makes sandwiches to order, among them an Apple Orchard Panini and a Roast Beef Cheddar Chipotle.

Arizona Highways named the pie the best in Arizona in 2010. In 2018 Lonely Planet’s Ultimate Eats ranked the world’s top 500 food experiences and placed apple pie in the USA at number 85, with Apple Annie’s leading that category. “There’s nothing like eating apple pie right where the apples are picked,” Mandy said at the time. “Also, it’s a delicious recipe!”

Six thousand trees and a change of plan

John and Annie Holcomb both grew up in Phoenix, according to Mandy, and came to Willcox for John’s job with the Arizona Game and Fish. In the early 1980s they planted 6,000 apple trees to grow fruit commercially. Mandy told the Arizona Farm Bureau that her parents took up farming “to make much more money,” ha-ha. “They quickly learned the hard work, trials, and failures of it.”

The two main sources tell the turn differently. The family’s own account says that when the trees began producing in 1986, “we decided to sell our apples on a you-pick basis.” A 2026 KGUN 9 report says the wholesale fruit industry had left Willcox before the trees ever bloomed, and the family changed course. “We had no experience in farming prior to this,” Mandy said. “We’ve just kind of learned as we went.” In that first season Annie and 8-year-old Matt baked the pies and apple bread, John grew the apples and pressed cider, and 6-year-old Mandy was the sales clerk. Annie is the Apple Annie of the name.

In the mid-1980s the family planted peaches and pears and grafted some of the first apple trees over to new varieties, so there would be fruit to pick across the whole four-month season. The grill, the gift shop, hayrides, the maze and the festivals came later. At the 18th annual Peach Mania, a photographer for the Arizona Daily Star caught grill-man Heath Bowen, in his 14th and final year at Apple Annie’s, flipping pancakes as scoops of warm peach topping went onto the stacks. By 2018 the orchard held 7,100 apple trees, 4,700 peach trees, 800 Asian pear trees and 300 cherry trees, along with 37 acres of pumpkins and 19 of sweet corn.

In 2003 the family bought Hunsdon Farms, which became the Williams Road produce farm. In 2006 Mandy joined full-time, once the company could afford another full-time paid staff member. She began in public relations and now also oversees the bakery and sales. One year the corn maze honored the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Today the owners are John and Annie, Matt and Alicia, Mandy and David Kirkendall, and John’s father, Don. Mandy gives the best business advice she has received as “Keep the farm experience authentic. We could add so many attractions to grow the business, but we want to keep the fresh fruits and veggies as the main attraction.”

The fortieth season

The 2026 season, the fortieth, began with heat. Warm March weather pushed ripening two to three weeks ahead, and the orchard opened before its usual July start. The cherries were lost. “If they’re in full bloom, that heat just kills the pollen, and there’s just really no way to cool down the entire area,” said Kirkendall, whose title is Director of Fun. “We’ve never had to deal with the heat like this. It’s always been the cold. We’re always fighting frost in the spring, and this year was just complete opposite.” That August some peaches came in about the size of apricots, and the farm sold them as Peach Nuggets.

On the night of August 10, a storm with 100 mph winds knocked down more than 50 power poles in the area, and the orchard stayed closed the next day. On August 12 it reopened for apple and pear picking, with much of the crop still on the trees. On September 11 the family held an apple pie class at the Country Store, the first in nearly two decades, and sent each baker home with an unbaked pie and a copy of the 40th Anniversary Friends & Family Cookbook. Mandy’s son grew up working on the farm, and her niece and nephew work there now. “I’ll be here as long as I can,” she said, “and see if the kids want to take over from there.”