Cider Providers: Hansen’s Green Bluff Orchard

On a sunny ridge just north of Spokane, where the air always carries a faint smell of ripe fruit, Hansen’s Green Bluff Orchard offers more than just apples and raspberries. It offers a taste of tradition — a story rooted in hard work, dreams, and the simple miracle of growing things from the earth.

“I started picking raspberries when I was about 8, and I’m going to finish out picking raspberries,” said Karen Hansen, the orchard’s matriarch, when the Washington Grown TV (WGTV) crew visited in Season 12. She and her late husband didn’t set out to be farmers, not exactly. But fate — and a good pear — had other plans.

“My husband was a professor at Whitworth College, but had always dreamt of having a farm and an orchard,” said Karen. “One day in 1985, I came up here to Green Bluff to buy a box of pears and told the lady that my husband was always wanting to have an orchard. She laughed and winked and said, ‘We’ve got 10 acres for sale just down the road.’ And the rest is history.”

That 10 acres has blossomed into a beloved spot on the Green Bluff loop, where generations of locals and visitors alike have come to pick fruit, sip cider, and reconnect with the land. Today, Karen’s son, Derek, helps run the orchard — and the legacy. He manages the trees, presses the cider, and welcomes visitors with a smile and a booming laugh.

“Thursdays are cider days,” Derek said as WGTV host Kristi Gorenson looked on, standing beside the humming machine that transforms apples into Hansen’s famous cider. “Every batch is different. Every barrel is different, because every apple is different.”

Their cider operation began in 1994, when a terrible hailstorm turned into a blessing in disguise. The apple crop for that year was ruined by the hail, but the team borrowed a neighbor's cider press and turned the mangled fruit into hundreds of gallons of sweet cider. Ever since, Hansen's cider has had a devoted following of fans around Spokane.

When Kristi wanted to try her hand at making cider, farmhand Pete graciously stepped out of the way to let her take over.

“Stand on the platform, fill the hopper with apples, and let them roll down the side of the hopper,” Derek instructed. While Kristi loaded up the hopper, he laughed and gave some unsolicited medical advice, which caused the whole crew to double over with laughter. “You have to be careful drinking too much of this, because it is loaded with pectin, and it will go right through you.”

When Karen’s husband planted the orchard’s first trees, he did so with a future full of cider in mind. “He planted varieties that would ripen throughout the season, so there would always be fresh apples to pick for the cider,” Karen explained as Kristi sampled the cider. “It’s a popular item for us. Every weekend during apple harvest, by Sunday, we’re sold out. We just can’t keep cider in that cooler for very long.”

There’s something undeniably special about what the Hansens have cultivated — not just in fruit, but in community. “What we can produce up here is just amazing. It really is,” Karen says. “When you think about what you put in the dirt, and what comes out of it. I know there’s a scientific reason for how it all happens, but it’s a miracle to me.”

And on crisp autumn mornings, when the orchard echoes with laughter and customers carry away gallons of the sweet cider, it’s hard to disagree. There’s a tiny miracle in every sip.