If there's any truth to the saying that "an apple a day keeps the doctor away," then the physicians of Medina, Texas better just close up shop. This Hill Country community is the core of the Texas apple industry, a business that's growing by the bushel.

The Hill Country celebrates this blooming industry with the International Apple Festival, scheduled annually for late July. What began as an orchard party has become a major festival. The party begins the night before with a street dance and continues the next day with activities for the whole family.

The annual festival includes events such as a contest for the best apple, best apple pie, and best apple anything. There is also a quilt contest, volleyball championship, and, for the really energetic, a "triapple-on". Arts and crafts booths tempt shoppers with homemade items. Kids enjoy a petting zoo, clowns, face painting, and games. Continuous entertainment keeps up the festive mood with performers on three stages.

Today Medina is recognized as the capital of the Texas apple industry, a business that took root in 1981 when Baxter Adams and wife Carol moved to Love Creek Ranch outside of Medina. Baxter spent 30 years as an exploration geologist for the oil industry before moving to this region. It's a land of rocky, rugged hills, with fertile valleys irrigated by the cool waters of Love Creek, a spring-fed creek that originates on the ranch.

These valleys gave Adams the idea for an orchard, an orchard which would not take a great deal of land. "I don't have much tillable land," Adams explains, pointing to the steep hills where goats once grazed. "I've got to really make it count. It's a matter of trying to squeeze the most possible dollars out of the smallest possible area."

And that's just what Baxter Adams has done.

This Texas version of Johnny Appleseed specializes in dwarf apple trees, plants which reach a height of only five or six feet. The lilliputians boast full-size apples, however, up to 50 pounds per tree, in varieties from the common Red Delicious to the unusual Gala and Crispin.

Baxter and Carol started with just 1000 trees in 1981, and they were soon in the apple business. Unlike the full-sized trees that take seven years to produce a crop, the dwarfs yield fruit in just a year and a half. Another advantage Adams has over the northern producers is his growing season. Texas apples ripen weeks before their Northern cousins.

It's easy to see that this just isn't a business for Baxter Adams, it's a challenge. When he walks down a row of Red Delicious, he stops to polish one of the crimson fruits. "I just love that color. So many people told us 'you can't grow apples in Texas because they won't turn red.'" Adams laughs and pulls the bright red apple from the tree, taking a crunching bite.

Good news travels fast, and when word of Adams' success spread, it brought several other growers to the area, a fact that pleases this farmer. "I'm trying to encourage lots of people to get into the apple business. The more people who get into the business the better off we'll all be. I can't raise enough apples by myself to make a difference. If we can get a lot of good growers in here, people will come to this area to buy good apples."

Growers who come to the area soon find that it's a town operation, with nearly all of Medina, taking part. This is a one-street town, but there's no mistaking its apple connection. The Adams Apple Company is downtown Medina. The processing plant stays busy from July through October, and the Cider Mill Store is filled year around. The store, which Adams identifies as "my wife's principle endeavor these days," is a compendium of everything apple-related. "We sell apple jelly, apply jam, apple syrup, and apple shampoo." Not to mention a terrific apple ice cream.

"I feel like Medina's a special place," says Baxter Adams, looking out on the Medina storefronts -- the Cider Mill, the Adams Apple headquarters, the processing plant and the apple festival offices. "I think Love Creek's had a good impact on Medina and the people of Medina have been very supportive of Love Creek and the apple business. It's been a very happy marriage."

As Adams stands on the sidewalk, every passing car and pickup gives him a neighborly wave or stops to chat for a second. It's easy to see that to the population of Medina, Baxter Adams is the apple of their eye.

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