Art continued to do odd jobs in apple orchards while he was a student. When Art was fifteen years old, he got a steady job in a Kelowna orchard. By this time, there were ten children in the Rogers’ family, so earning an income to help the family was more important than going to school. Little did Art know when he was a young boy in the 1920s that he was just beginning a long life in the apple industry.

Early Days in the Apple Industry

The first apple trees were planted in the Okanagan over sixty years before the Rogers’ family arrived in Kelowna. Father Pandosy, a priest, had arrived in Kelowna in 1859 to set up a Catholic mission. He was one of the first white settlers in the Okanagan Valley. On the mission property, Father Pandosy planted a few apple trees. He wanted apples just for use at the mission, not for sale. The Okanagan’s first commercial orchard did not appear until over 30 years after Father Pandosy planted his first few trees.

Many orchards in the Okanagan Valley started as cattle ranches, like the Postill Ranch outside Vernon and the Ellis Ranch near Penticton. Ranches were popular with early settlers because land was cheap and cattle were easier to care for than apple trees. Cattle could be set free on a ranch to graze and fatten up with very little human care needed. Also, cattle could be walked to the railhead. Fruit farming, on the other hand, took more physical manpower from start to finish, and transportation was needed to get the fruit to market. It was not until 1892 and the arrival of the Shuswap and Okanagan (S & O) Railway to the Okanagan Valley that commercial fruit farming became a viable business. At long last, fruit and other produce grown in the Okanagan Valley could easily be shipped on the S & O Railway and its connection to the Canadian Pacific Railway’s transcontinental train at Sicamous. Once the obstacles of getting the fruit to market were overcome, many cattle ranchers branched out into fruit growing.