The day after retirement, this Illinois couple opened their own apple orchard

The day after Steve Miller, an author and former energy industry worker, retired in 2013, he and his wife Lugene launched their next adventure: opening Liberty Apple Orchard in Edwardsville, Illinois.

“We have lived all over the country,” Steve said. “We picked apples everywhere we went, and we wanted to have an opportunity to give that back to a community.”

Apple trees take several years to mature, so the couple had to put their plans in motion well in advance. However, there was still a learning curve for figuring out how to operate an apple orchard once they opened for business.

“It's a lot of good old-fashioned trial and error,” Steve said, “And we've made our share of errors and learned from those.”

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