U-Pick 2023 is Now Open!
It’s the first week of our U-Pick season! We opened this past Sunday, September 3rd, and I just realized while talking to a customer that it’s our 10th year of U-Pick at this location (before we opened the U-Pick orchard on Ridge Road, our customers could pick their own apples for decades from the big trees down at our home farm in Lyndonville).
One thing we hear all the time when people come in from our U-Pick orchard is “I had no idea there were so many varieties of apples!” And it’s true, we have a LOT of different varieties out there! Over 370 different apple varieties are represented in our U-Pick Orchard (but not even close to all- there are thousands of known varieties of apples!) For those of you who haven’t visited, our U-Pick orchard has a special section in the front half of the planting that we call our “Heritage Orchard”. There alone we have over 350 varieties of apples that date back hundreds of years from all over the world!
“Single Tree” section of our U-Pick orchard
Some of those varieties have only one single tree, those are fun to explore and sample, but there’s never a huge quantity of fruit to pick. Others have more historical significance or are more interesting and/or delicious, so we planted a whole row of them. Want to try an apple that people may have eaten in France in the 1500s? Try a ‘Summer Rambo’! Interested in sampling Thomas Jefferson’s favorite apple (and one of mine, too)? Pick an ‘Esopus Spitzenburg’! Wondering about the most popular (and most planted) apple variety in the Northeast in 1850? Bite into a ‘Baldwin’!
Example of red flesh apple
In addition to these historical varieties, our U-Pick orchard features unique and mind-boggling varieties (I call them my “party tricks” … I don’t go to many parties). We have several of the single tree varieties that have pink or red flesh on the inside. I still remember the poor customer who bit into a ‘Hidden Rose’ and thought his mouth was bleeding! But it was just a vibrantly pigmented apple interior! We also have several ‘russeted’ varieties of apples. These are apples whose skin is partially or completely covered in rough, scratchy, brownish patches, almost like a russet potato skin. Many people shy away from these apples because they’re not the picture-perfect image they’ve become accustomed to in the grocery store. But I will choose a russet apple over a plain old Gala any day of the week! They are often highly aromatic and packed with flavor. (Russeting can be genetic -like our ‘Roxbury Russet, Golden Russet, Razor Russet, and more- or it can be a result of frost damage like we’re seeing a lot of in our orchard this year). And we have apples of every size, shape, and color! From the tiny round ‘Pitmaston Pineapple’ to the elongated cylindrical ‘Kandil Sinap’, and from the bright green ‘Northwest Greening’ to the almost black ‘Black Oxford’, there are apples to delight all of the senses!
And of course, we have your tried and true, your go-to classics. Empire (everyone’s favorite NY apple), Jonagold (MY favorite NY apple), McIntosh, Crispin, Cortland, Fuji, Golden Delicious and more more more!
Each variety in our orchard is labeled with the variety name, the place of origin, and the date of the first recorded mention of the apple. And each variety has its own perfect season of ripeness, often lasting just a week or two. Every variety must be picked at peak ripeness – unlike a peach or a banana, an apple won’t improve with time after harvest, it just gets soft and less flavorful. We pick all of our pre-picked apples within that ripe window and immediately put them in Cold Storage (more on that later!) to stop the post-harvest ripening, and we encourage you to do the same! When you visit our Upick Orchard, you’ll notice that we color-code the varieties with little wooden squares indicating if they’re ripe right now (Green), almost ready (Yellow), or not even close (Red)! So on any given day, a new variety might be opened up for picking while an earlier one might be done for the season. We try our best to keep you updated on orchard conditions, but variety availability can literally change in an hour if it’s a busy day at Upick! We ask Upickers to be flexible with their expectations and understand that availability of varieties are always subject to change. Favorite varieties can almost always be found (pre-picked at peak ripeness and then refrigerated) in bins in our sales pavilion, and maybe you can pick a new-to-you variety in the orchard that will become a new favorite! Either way, you’ll be sure to go home with fresh and delicious apples, and, at the core, isn’t that the best part of fall, anyway?!
Happy picking!
All my best,
Katie