The Julian Pie Company

As a follow-up to yesterday’s story here’s about the Julian pie: The Julian Pie Company became  a reality for Liz Smothers in September of 1986. It all started when she and a neighbour began peeling apples for a local pie shop where she was soon employed to bake and sell pies. Tim, her son worked after school rolling dough. Recognizing her expertise, two other pie shops hired her to bake for them. While Liz enjoyed the activity and baking for the pie shops, she had a desire to be creative on her own and not merely bake someone else’s pie. With the assistance of a friend and emphasis on quality control and clean, neat surroundings, the Julian Pie Company began. In 1989 Keith and Liz purchased an apple farm and with the help of son Dan, 17,000 trees were planted to supply fresh apples for the pie shop. While the orchard occupied much of Keith’s time, Liz’s expertise was in the kitchen ensuring quality control. Her goal was to produce a pie that would capture the essence of the small mountain town of Julian. Being the youngest of eight children, Liz attributes the love of pie making to her mother. “One of my fondest memories is standing on a box beside my mother putting leftover pie dough in a metal jar lid to make a pie.” Today she attributes the success of the pie shop to her dedicated team of bakers and staff. It sure is a story of unique American entrepreneurship as it cannot found any better anywhere else. Thanks to the Pie Company we had just another afternoon with Apple Pie and fresh whipped cream. I could get used to that! While we were enjoying the pie, the temps kept climbing up reaching 80F for the second day in a row. So we kept ourselves within reach of a slight nice breeze. Another gorgeous day in the desert south-west is slowly coming to an end and I cannot but think of that we only have another month left before we need to turn the van north and east. We sure will miss our nice trailer but then a new tourist season will keep us busy, and I kinda know that the summer will be on the fast track and over as quickly as this winter will be soon. Thanks again for stopping by!