It’s Orchard Time

Some people find their way to apple orchards when the leaves are still green, the sun still high. I am not one of those people. When that sun is high, there is no greater urgency than to bathe myself under it. Everything else is secondary. This is true in June and it is true in August, and most years, the present one excluded, it is true in September. This year, it wasn’t true in September as much as it was the first half of October, which also kept me from an apple orchard. I am as a salmon, swimming upstream to the alpha orchard, and like the salmon, my migration isn’t based on the calendar, it’s based on the weather.

Last Friday, the wind rushed in and took many of our most vibrant fall yellows and tore them from their branches. The temperature was moderating around 58 degrees, and it was alternately cloudy and sunny but consistently and always windy. It wasn’t the sort of day I’d find myself on a boat or in a hammock or taking a nap, rather it was the sort of day that triggered my desire to eat apples. And though Tim Allen would have you believe that Michigan somehow hosts the best apple trees, I know this to be untrue. I know that if apples are on my agenda, and the weather is right and the mood is fitting, I will find my way not down the road towards a monumental Michstake, but instead, I will simply point my car south a few miles, and when I’ve past the Sentry in Walworth even my mouth knows that our destination is close.

Fall trips to the Royal Oak Farm Orchard just south of the state line near Walworth begin for me on days like Friday, but they began for my wife and kids many, many weeks ago. They’ll take trips to the orchard when it is 78 and sunny. I will not. It’s not that the orchard isn’t wonderful on 78 and sunny, but in order to appreciate a trip to this alpha orchard, I must be in the harvest mood. I have never been a farmer. I start each gardening year with the best of intentions. I plant some tomatoes, and generally some peppers. I know, because someone told me, that peppers and tomatoes do not grow well when planted in close proximity to one another, but I plant them like that anyway. And when I am done planting, I stand back, I lean on my shovel, and I feel as a farmer admiring his work. And then, when those plants start to grow, I ignore them in favor of the boat and the water and that powerful sun. I will look at the garden once in a while and determine to do a better job tending next year. But next year, as with Cubs baseball, Michigan’s economic recovery, and my garden, never comes.

So when my fall trips to the orchard commence, they tend to follow eerily similar patterns. Friday, I drove to the orchard. My children were intolerable in the car, as though they are unable to behave for time measured even on the second hand of a quickly running watch. We drove to the orchard, and the trip unfolded as it always does. While some stay at this orchard for many, many hours, I find it unnecessary to do so. My route is simple and it is concise, and it is easy to repeat as many times as the harvest spirit should prompt me. We arrive and park. We walk into the gift shop/donut shop. We buy coffee to drink and donuts to eat, and usually some apple cider (so much better here than where you get yours), and if I’m feeling generous, some of those apple caramel popped thingees. This is what they are, and this explanation should suffice.

And once we’re loaded with coffee and donuts and those caramel things, we’ll walk to the animal barn. My kids will feed sheep and goats and I’ll crank quarters through the dispenser that puts grain in ones hand where gumballs might typically fall. My kids will feed the goats and I’ll take pictures, and for a moment I’ll think that getting a goat might be a nice idea, and then I’ll quash that idea quickly and we’ll head towards the miniature train. This is a train that runs around an oval circuit, and the conductor is masterful at pulling on the horn that pronounces a chuga, chuga, chuga, chuga, choo, choo quite convincingly. And then, once the train ride is over, I’ll shuffle my kids past some of the other rides and towards the apple barn. Once the coffee and donuts are dispatched, there is little I want to do more than head towards the u-pick apples.

If you’re there on a Saturday, which you probably will be, there is a tractor that will give you a ride to the apple trees. If you are not there on a Saturday, there is no such free ride. On Friday, it was not Saturday, and so we walked. We walked in the wind, the sort that might normally give me a headache but today, on this trip, with this singular goal of consuming apples in mind, I was not bothered. U-pick apple orchards are always the same. The first few dozen trees off the main walking path are stripped of nearly every apple, save a few that are reserved at the very tops of the trees for the tallest, ladder toting patrons. But once beyond the stripped trees a few feet, there are apples with high fruit and low hanging fruit, and when I stumble up to these trees, I feel as though I’ve discovered something rare.

My kids and wife do too. Hopped up on cider donuts and not yet tired from our walk, we’ll proclaim each picked apple the ripest, the reddest, the most perfect. Thomas will pluck a particularly handsome specimen, and May will pick others, generally small ones that lack color as she isn’t quite sure which ones are the best to eat. “Look dad, a perfect apple!” Yes, honey, that is a perfect apple. That tiny, yellowish little apple that has been lying on the ground for three or four days certainly is the best apple. Kids these days.

But the apple picking pushes on. And we quickly fill our purchased bag while also filling our mouths. Any proper u-pick appler (new word) knows that in order to develop a discerning eye, it is imperative that one taste the apples at least periodically, so as to corral a proper method for identifying the sweetest, firmest apples. Honey Crisp apples, which are the darling of the apple eating world, are so precious that u-pick is not allowed for that species. Never mind, as I don’t care for the Honey Crisp in the same way that I care for the Cortland. The Cortland isn’t a diva. It puts on no airs. It just hangs there, in approachable rows, begging to be twisted, pulled, and then eaten. Some even make it into our bag and later, into a bowl on our counter.

The Royal Oak Farm Orchard isn’t like the orchard you go to. The apples there aren’t like the apples you buy from that guy on the side of the road, and they’re nothing like the apples you buy from your grocery store. There are better, and you and I know it. What sets the Royal Oak Farm apart, and what should force it onto your to do list for the upcoming weekends, is the vast array of things to do and foods to eat once you’re there. Any old orchard can allow you to pick some apples. But to find an orchard that allows you to eat its donuts, drink its coffee, pet its goats, ride on its train, buy its pies, drink its fresh pressed cider, buy its honey, pick through its pumpkins, and then pick its apples? Well that’s pure harvest time gold, brought to you courtesy of one magnificent orchard.