Doles Orchard
“We were contacted about roughly 10 years ago, by Allagash Brewing who was interested in some cherries for their beer. We sold them the cherries in some of our apple boxes that we had made to replace the really antique ones that were falling apart. And we said you know, whenever you're ready, we'll come in and pick those up, you know, deliver them in our boxes. And instead of calling to say, Hey, we're done come get these out of our way. They said hey, the tasting room lady would like to use them in her retail shop as shelving. So we're like okay, and we gave him a good deal on them because they had our name on it, free advertising. It looks good. They came back to us about a year later and said, You know who makes those boxes because we have this idea floating around. And so at this point, we've now made over 10,000 house beer crates, which is like a Coca Cola style, 24-case wooden crate with the dividers, metal banding around the ends handholds. So it's a pretty complicated box. But it was pretty exciting to kind of get into that. And for a while there, it was like 300 a month because they were just flying out the door. And so we've done a lot of different, unique projects with them, especially once we bought into the laser machines. And the whole idea behind what prompted us to purchase the lasers was, not everybody is Allagash. And not everybody can foresee or have the money to put up front for a project like that. And the brand that we use on their box at the time cost like 1,500 dollars, that's a really big upfront expense if you only want maybe 100 boxes. So for smaller companies that we wanted to be able to customize with their logo, that's what ended up bringing us to a laser machine and that can do that on a way cheaper scale. Because I don't have a branding plate, a piece of metal that's cut out with essentially a CNC machine, which is just a very expensive process. It's really cheap and quick to apply once you do that. But the lasers give you that versatility that a brand can’t do,” says Emily Chelate, daughter of Doles Orchard farm owners and head of Doles Orchard Box Shop.
Photographed by Kipp Vermeulen
The first custom crate Doles Orchard Box Shop ever made was for Allagash Brewing Company.
Doles Orchard has been around for quite some time and the Buntings decided to purchase it as it was a dream of theirs. Emily knows the ins and outs of farming but her passion is wood working, from crates to gift boxes to picnic basket crates and even very interesting projects.
“We had a woman come to us last year that had a very unique project. And she makes vaginal steam saunas. So it's a plywood box, heavy duty box we actually send out to be cut by a CNC guy for perfection because they're like mitered corners, there's holes for handles, holes for a core to come out. And then there's a cedar top that we glue pieces together and there's a hole and apparently it's a trending thing. I was a little nervous to look it up online myself. But it's always just been a fun story to tell. And she's keeping us really busy. So we've already sent out over 300 and we are scheduled between now and February to send out another 500 units. So that's pretty exciting. She's selling them on Amazon as well as Etsy. And what's the other one? Oh, I think her own website. So it's Guitar Love Calm if you want to check it out, but she's been keeping us super busy. Really kind of fun for us because it's very different from most of the other woodworking, you know, wooden boxes that we make. It's much more complicated, kind of unique,” says Emily.
Emily has also done other projects that don't include woodworking but does include laser cutting, which has been a popular technique amongst her smaller products including glassware, smaller boxes and signs.
Photographed by Kipp Vermeulen
Emily designs and crafts beautiful small boxes with designs that meet all audiences including Maine inspired, nautical, woods, and much more.
“I've engraved glassware. They do a lot of their kegs they send out with a keg wrench. And so we actually had to purchase this special paint that you paint onto the metal wrench because my lasers are a CO2 laser, which can't really affect metals, you have to have a fiber laser to do that, because they're too hard. What I can do is anodized aluminum, which is that color on aluminum water bottles and stuff like that, I can engrave away the color on the anodized aluminum and leave that shiny white silver aluminum behind. So it'll take off the color and then it’d be this silver. But otherwise, I really can't do much with metals. So what we have, what somebody came up with, is a paint that you paint on, and you put it in the laser and the laser or the heat will actually essentially fuse it to the metal and create almost like an enamel paint on it. So they had some strip of text that they wanted on there. I engraved those on. And then the paint, the part that's not engraved, just washes right off. So it's kind of cool learning these new things. ‘Hey, can you do this?’ Oh, let's see. So there's been a lot of unique projects like that through Allagash,” says Emily.
Emily and her family will always be in Maine as they work day to day tending to their farm and crafting things they love for good people in the Maine community.
Photographed by Kipp Vermeulen
Doles Orchard offers apple picking from late summer into late fall.
Photographed by Kipp Vermeulen
Emily and her team craft wooden picnic baskets that turn into a picnic table. They are the perfect apple picking accessory.
Photographed by Kipp Vermeulen
Nancy and her cook bake delicious pies for the fall season from blueberry to apple and cheddar and pumpkin.
“Maine is known for having a really good, diverse group of talented individuals who are creating and sending their products out into the world. I have somebody out in California who's like, ‘Oh my God, people just love things from Maine.’ People really like to see that Made in Maine sticker on their piece. And I guess that's what I've heard anyway. I mean, honestly, sometimes it's hard to know why or when or what makes it work. But we have stores from here to Alaska with our stuff in it. So it's pretty exciting. And something's working anyway, whether it's made or if it's just luck, I don't know,” says Emily.