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The mind behind

4 min read
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Katherine Vojtko, founder of Katherine’s Dried Spiced Apples, LLC, stands at her booth on a recent sunny day.

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Katherine Vojtko, founder of Katherine’s Dried Spiced Apples, LLC, stands at her booth on a recent sunny day.

The first time I tried Katherine’s Dried Spiced Apples, LLC, or as I call them, “apple snacks,” I thought they were delicious and wanted to know how they were made. Fortunately, Katherine Vojtko, creator of the tasty 100-calories-per-ounce apple snacks and proud owner of the business, took time to share her story with Flipside.

Q. When did you start your business?

A. I started my business in March of last year. It took a few months before I opened it. I had to get approvals and develop the right formulas. But in March of last year, I got approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

Q.Your business is located in Monongahela. Do you work from home?

A.I do work from home. I got into this because I’ve always enjoyed dehydrating things, and I started out dehydrating herbs and tomatoes from my garden. Then, I took that hobby and developed it into a little business.

Q.You said on your website you work with your husband and your husband does the planting. Could you explain exactly what he does?

A. Well, my husband takes care of the garden so he does the tilling of the soil and all of this. He’s really responsible for the garden and I wanted to give him credit. I didn’t want people on the website to think that I did all that work because we do have a pretty good-size garden. Now, we don’t grow all these apples at our house. I have to buy the apples because we just don’t have enough apple trees. But, the herbs, the tomatoes and many of the things that I dehydrate we do grow on our three acres in Monongahela. Although, for Katherine’s Dried Spiced Apples, I buy the apples commercially.

Q.What do you use to make your apples? On your website, it says you use spices and water. How do you make them?

A. Well, I like Gala apples the most because they’re big and crunchy. I’ll peel them, core them and slice them. I’ll slice them about an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch thick and then when I have all of the apples out on a sheet, I’ll sprinkle them with my spices. I’m always experimenting with new spice combinations. I’ll try new combinations of spices, look online for recipes like pear pie, and whatever spice combinations are in the recipe, I’ll use those for my apples. Usually I’ll do a test batch to see if I got the mixture right. After I have the apple slices out on a sheet and I sprinkle them with the spices, I put them into my dehydrator. I have a big dehydrator with ten shelves and I’ll fill up all the shelves with the apple slices that have been seasoned and I’ll let them dehydrate for about six hours. At the end of the six hours, I’ll let them sit for several hours to kind of normalize. I don’t want to put them in the bags too early because I want them to normalize their hydration. Then, I’ll weigh them out so that there’s an ounce, put the label on the bag, write what the flavor is, pack them up, seal it, and then they’re ready to sell.

Q.How much does this cost you?

A. I just started this and probably at the end of the first year of the operation, I’ll look back, I’ll be able to add up all of my costs, expenses, and profits to see how profitable it is. I like doing this for two reasons. One is I really love meeting the people here and second it does make money but I don’t really do it for the money. It’s more of a hobby that I do that also makes money.

If you would like to learn more about Katherine’s Dried Spiced Apples or buy some of her scrumptious apple snacks, then visit her website, http://www.driedspicedapples.com.

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