A family tree - where apples grow

A family tree - where apples grow

Cottonwood Cider House nourishes bellies, souls

Cottonwood Cider House is rooted in family – both blood relatives and the family that exists only in rural America.

For Stacy Nelson-Heising and her husband, Dan Heising, the fourth-generation farmstead provides for their family. It also provides a place for the community to gather and connect.

Located near Ayr, about 20 miles northeast of Tower City, Cottonwood Farm is an 11-acre orchard with thousands of semi-dwarf apple trees. The couple planted 100 apple and 50 cherry trees there in 2012. Since then, they’ve planted thousands more. Organically, both the apples and the business grew. Organic farming is what Stacy’s dad, Charles, started when he grew grain crops there in the 1980s.

The Nelson farm was the first certified organic farm in Cass County, with more than 2,000 certified acres of farmland. At Cottonwood Farm, the apples grow alongside alfalfa, native prairie flowers, and grasses. This assorted plant life attracts pollinators like butterflies and bees. Birds make nests in the apple trees, too, and offer natural pest control.

“We will have a peck on an apple from time to time, but we don’t have chemical residue on our apples,” Stacy writes on her website.

“I wouldn’t know how to do it any other way,” Stacy says. “We grow organically to give back to the earth that’s given to us for years and years.”

The farm supported the Nelson family for generations, and Stacy is proud of her family history.

“Growing up, I spent most of my time with my family,” she says. “These people made me who I am today.”

Stacy’s great-great-grandparents, Karolius and Olianna Nelson, moved to the Dakota Territory from Norway in 1884. They farmed in Ransom and Sargent counties. By 1910, one of their sons, Nels, had moved to Cass County, settling near Ayr. There, he and his wife, Nellie, and their children raised animals.

In 1938, during the Great Depression, Nels planted cottonwood trees that continue to tower over the family home and outbuildings. These trees are one of the reasons the couple named their business Cottonwood Farm.

Nels’ son, Norman, took over the family farm in 1952. Norman transitioned the farm from animals to grain crops until the early 1980s, when his sons, Charles (Stacy’s dad) and Larry, took over. Together, the brothers converted the land from conventional farming to using organic-only methods. When they retired from farming in 2006, they sold the machines and equipment and rented out the land.

No machinery meant grain farming was no longer an option. Then, one day, Stacy and her mom had an idea to continue the farming heritage. The Nelson family farm legacy could continue if they transformed the grain farm into an apple orchard.

Stacy calls these leaves of change “innovative reshaping.” The transformation tradition is one she continues into the 21st century.