For the past 47 years, Lee and Audrey Wagers have made their living growing apples in Amwell, Washington County, a business that often can be more cruel than quaint.

Their crop, which starts to bloom during volatile spring weather, has survived seasons marred by declining bee populations, frosts, hailstorms and tornadoes and their business, now reduced to a couple of farmers markets, has persisted while globalization bankrupted adjacent orchards. Mrs. Wagers likened it to "the story of Job."

But now a fire that mostly spared the orchard but destroyed all of the farm's equipment threatens to put the Apple Crest Orchards out of business.

Lone Pine Fire Capt. Chaz McVay said two metal-sided storage buildings and a small wood-framed barn caught fire late Saturday afternoon while the Wagerses' grandsons were burning trash in bins near the buildings. Embers apparently caught the grass on fire, and soon the fire ripped through the structures, destroying cars, tractors and a pesticide sprayer inside. It took seven fire departments two hours to get the fire under control.

Mrs. Wagers, known locally as the "Apple Lady," had still not come to terms with the possibility that the orchard would have to shut down and was reluctant to talk about what would happen to it ultimately. She and her husband, both 76, have run the orchard virtually on their own since the early 1990s.

"I haven't faced it," she said. "We loved the life ... we're going to do whatever we can do."

The orchard's failure is a devastating prospect, considering the land has been in Mr. Wagers' family since the 1860s. His great-uncle planted the orchard during World War I, and his father, unable to find employment during the Great Depression, came back to the orchard and planted trees for 50 cents a day.

Mr. Wagers, who also worked as a printer at the Washington Observer-Reporter until 1986, bought the orchard from his great-uncle's estate in 1962 with a GI loan. Five generations of his family have harvested apples there.

At its peak, the orchard employed 30 people, sold apples wholesale to grocery store chains and made two-thirds of the apple cider in Washington County with a press in the barn. In 1991, one of the storage buildings caught fire and destroyed some equipment, forcing them to scale back their wholesale business and shut down their cider operation. Today, Mr. and Mrs. Wagers only have the occasional help of a grandson and sell to two farmers markets.

Steve Dettinger, the coordinator of the Main Street Farmers Market in Washington, said that if the orchard shuts down, locals will be missing out on the special varieties only grown by the Wagers, like the Early July, a delicate, extra-tart apple that most orchards have abandoned because they bruise too easily.

"She just had just an amazing range and had the sort of apples that you remember hearing about as a child but never having found them in the grocery store," Mr. Dettinger said.

But more than the apples, Mr. Dettinger said the greatest loss to the local market will be Mrs. Wagers, the "Apple Lady," who whose charm and kindness kept customers coming back just as much as her delicious apples.

"Losing Audrey would create a huge vacancy in our hearts," he said. "We won't have the range of apples that she brought, but we won't have Audrey ... of the two, the second is more profound."

He said he's hoping that a local farm will be able to lend them the equipment necessary to preserve this year's crop.

Mr. Wagers did not seem confident that he and his wife would be able to rebound from this disaster. His knees are failing, and he is still recovering from eye surgery that had to be delayed after he got poked in the eye by a tree branch last year while he was out spraying pesticides.

"We're 76, I can't build up a building anymore," he said. "It depends on how the insurance turns out ... and how I get this knee straightened out."

Without pesticides, worms and mites will likely get the best of the apples. But even with the prospect of the orchard's failure, Mrs. Wagers' optimism persists.

"About the best I can do is put a sign up with 'organic, with a lot of protein,'" she said with a laugh.