When our grandson and his parents came up for Thanksgiving, we headed out to a nearby orchard, 'The Farmer's Pantry', where we found a few hundred other folks and their young children! This orchard has a store, a pick-your-own operation, a petting zoo, and a pumpkin patch among other attractions. We had a great time, mainly picking a big bag of apples for them to take home.
The early varieties are now completely picked, and we had to walk a long distance down the rows to pick our own, but in the commercial side of the orchard with the harvest about 2/3 done, these trees were as yet unharvested.
The trees were absolutely laden with fruit.
It was tempting to fill up here, but we stuck by the rules and only picked in the public area. This year we chose Courtlands and Ida Reds to pick and take home.
The commercial side of the orchard is a very different story. These apple boxes have all been picked by the crew of pickers, and will be shipped off for apple sauce or apple pie filling.
The rows of picked trees stretched out as far as the eye could see - 125 acres all together, providing 4.5 million pounds of apples. In fact I talked to the owner one day when it wasn't busy, and she said that they just run the pick-your-own and public attraction part of the farm "for fun", because she enjoys meeting the customers and families. The real financial operation is the commercial one.
There was also a pumpkin patch, somewhat picked over by now, but bright on the sunny Sunday.
And of course the store, with about a dozen varieties for sale at this stage (five were available for pick-your-own). There's quite a price differential between the popular new varieties like Honey Crisp and Ambrosia and the older ones like Macs and Melbas. It made for a great Thanksgiving Sunday afternoon.
Those red apples look mighty delicious!
ReplyDeleteMy cousin has a similar amount of acreage, maybe a bit more, but he doesn't do the pick your own side of things. The apples do look tasty!
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot of apples! A friend of mine used to run a pick-your-own strawberry operation but stopped doing it when he found that people were bringing bowls, spoons and even cream and having free picnics on his land.
ReplyDeleteHello, the apples do look delicious..I like these pick your own farms.. Sounds like a fun afternoon! Enjoy your Sunday!
ReplyDeleteThat could have all been right here. I think the harvest is also about 2/3 done here. I see a lot of orchards still heavily laden. Nice pix.
ReplyDeletebeautiful red aplles against that gorgeous blue sky!! this is my favorite time of year, apple picking, pumpkin picking, fall festivals.....it's just a wonderful time of year to be outdoors!!!
ReplyDeleteWow.. that's a very fine apple crop. Those trees look amazing. Lovely spot and sounds like you had a great day.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great apple crop there this year. Good for the economy after last years losses.
ReplyDeleteLove this wonderful pictures of the apple orchard. Good to see the excellent crop. May you have more sunny days!
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