Apple Picking in the Burbs

by the Wesfoodie*

(October 4, 2006) It was a weekend for the perfect excursion to experience the arrival of autumn. A moment made to take the kids out of their usual Larchmont Saturday routine to experience harvesting food directly from a source close to the earth. We would go apple picking.

We drove up 684 and as we approached the Bedford/Mt. Kisco exit the view opened up and we could see the hills ahead crisscrossed with light fields and patches of deep green woods – the gateway to Upstate! My wife and I looked at each other, pleased and excited.

We were north of Katonah when we exited the highway onto a twisting back road through the densely wooded area. Just past a turn up ahead I saw the first glimpse of the orchards. Then an opening became clear and soon we could see what looked like a farm house or a barn and someone was out on the road, a farm hand, or, wait, maybe, no…. it was a New York State Trooper in an orange vest directing what quickly became apparent was a fuming, revving, anxious-to-park-and-start-picking line of cars going back several lengths up the road.

We fought our way through to an opening into a large field on a hill. There, a battalion of baton waving attendants directed the constant stream of incoming vehicles into orderly rows across the once green grass. Tour buses were scattered on the outer edge of the field, and a long line of visitors with long metal jousting lance-like instruments could be seen marching towards a distant opening in the bushes. It seems we were not alone in our plans for a sublime outing in the North Country. These were our fellow apple pickers with borrowed picking sticks in hand - hundreds upon hundreds of other suburban families all jostling and positioning for a chance to grab a fruit from the trees up ahead.

We made our way towards the orchard. Like a scene from Planet of the Apes, the grove was teeming with crowds of gatherers: people pulling apples from the trees, children running around throwing fallen fruit at one another and large sticks waving wildly at the tops of trees as apples tumbling down onto the families below.

At times the orchard was simply not large enough for the onslaught of pickers. As my son ran up to a tree rich with red fruit, a fellow gatherer intent on grabbing some of the good ones for herself walloped him with her leather handbag. As I turned to protect him from the oncoming blow, I came face up against her neat velvet jacket, expensive jewelry and perfectly done hair. Her perfume enveloped us as we made to leave. But we were too late to avoid her shrieking to her children down the orchards: “Come on, we have to hurry up – we can come back next weekend, we have tennis up here.”

Onward we went through the trees picking fruit and occasionally biting into a crisp Macintosh after carefully wiping off the large white patches of insecticides covering each apple. Although the all too civilized hand of agricultural chemical companies interfered with our communion with nature, none came between us and the many tangles and shoots of poison ivy vines surrounding and climbing many of the trees. As my son’s tongue was about to sample a particularly notable vine on the tree he had climbed, I grabbed him and declared the apple picking at an end.

Well, the day had not turned out quite as planned. Still, for twenty bucks we made off with some pretty good apples, and the kids loved it. We had avoided the usual weekend routine of the little ones melting down in a collapsing spiral of tears and rage when it's time to leave Turtle Park. Not bad. Now we just have to figure out what to do with a bushel of apples – but that is another story.

Note to readers: In prior years we have enjoyed picking apples a bit further north in New Paltz where we never experienced the overcrowding and related issues described above (although pesticides on the apples is a problem in all non-organic orchards). So my recommendation: go further north. A good list of apple picking locations can be found on Westchester County's website and a map and list of New Paltz area u-pic-its can be found at www.hudsonvalleyfarms.com.

The WesFoodie, a Larchmont resident, blogs about food in Eating in the Burbs. When not eating his way round the Burbs, The WesFoodie can be found bemoaning the exponential growth of waistlines in direct proportion to sleepless nights of childrearing and other immutable laws of mid-life in the suburbs.

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