MINERAL POINT, Wis. — If anyone knows the importance of pollinators, it’s Deirdre Birmingham, the owner of the Cider Farm in Mineral Point, Wis. It’s a certified organic apple orchard.

Some people stop to smell the roses. At the Cider Farm, Deirdre stops to admire the clover.

“In my world, I get excited about the little things,” she said.

Clover is just one of many flowering plants within the certified-organic orchard that provides a habitat for the native pollinators. 

“[Clover]’s friendly to a lot of bees, to the monarch butterfly, to more insects that we feed out here in the ecosystem of our orchard,” Birmingham said.  

Thanks to 30 acres worth of prairie around the orchard, pollinators are not only attracted to the Cider Farm, but they keep coming back, according to Birmingham.

Wisconsin has hundreds of varieties of wild bees. They come in all shapes and sizes. The honeybee is a regular at the Cider Farm.

Spring’s unpredictable weather had Deirdre concerned. She said the honeybees that generally visit hadn’t arrived when they normally would.

“The problem with just relying on honeybees is they don’t like to work in cold, windy or rainy weather,” Birmingham said.  

But finally, she said she felt some relief.

“I wasn’t hearing buzz-buzz,” she recalled. “I was thinking, ‘Oh dear, are there bees out here working my crop?’”

When she went to check on her crops, there they were. She said she just couldn’t hear them.

The Cider Farm is home to about 16,000 apple trees. But the apples harvested aren’t for eating. Birmingham and her husband started the Cider Farm to make booze.

“We are the only ones I know of that just started growing apples to ferment cider," Birmingham said.

The Cider Farm makes hard cider and apple brandy.

“If not for all the work we did over the years to provide for the wild pollinators, I wouldn’t have apples on these trees. They were only blooming for three days and they worked fast,” she said.

Cider Farm’s tasting room is located in Madison. Learn more, here.