Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian Lehrer today. Have you heard the shocking weather forecast? Shocking because of what's not in it. After eight straight weekends of at least one rainy day, there is no rain predicted for this weekend. I almost hesitate to say it out loud because I don't want to curse it. We also get an extra hour of sleep which is pretty great.

If you're looking for something to do outside, no umbrella required, maybe this is your chance to go apple-picking that delightfully [unintelligible 00:00:49] tradition complete with cider and donuts and probably loads of pictures for your socials. Those pick-your-own apple orchards would welcome you. A recent New York Times article was headlined The Apple-Picking Apocalypse of Upstate New York. Wow.

To talk more about the impact of the weather on this business, I'm joined by the reporter who wrote that article, Elizabeth Dunn. She's the James Beard Award-winning freelance journalist who covers the intersection of food, business, and culture. She also co-hosts the podcast Pressure Cooker. We're also joined by Peter Hull, owner of Apple Dave’s in Warwick, New York. Liz, Peter, welcome to WNYC.

Peter Hull: Good morning.

Elizabeth Dunn: Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, if you braved the weather to pick apples this fall, please call us, tell us about it. Where did you go? What did you get? If you have a favorite recipe for all those apples you picked, we'd love to hear it, or if you want to shout out your favorite pick-your-own apple farm, I'm sure Apple Dave's won't mind sharing the spotlight a little bit,

give us a call, the number is 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692. If you can't get through on the phone, you can text that number or tweet us @BrianLehrer. Liz, I know you probably didn't write the headline but does apocalypse sum it up?

Elizabeth Dunn: Yes. Well, it comes pretty close, because, listen, for those of us who have had to brave the rain for eight straight weekends who are just normal consumers going about our daily life, it's annoying but it's not the end of the world. If you run a farm where you specialize in pick-your-own apples, this is your two months to make sometimes the bulk of the farm's income. That type of weather event, having literally half of your days be rainy days where almost no one shows, is pretty disastrous for a lot of these orchards. Peter, how has it been at Apple Dave's orchards?

Peter Hull: Well, as Liz says, we basically get 16 days a year to make our entire income.

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Peter Hull: Half of those disappeared entirely and the other half were a little mixed. It was pretty tough getting a nice day anytime this fall on a weekend. Then of course on Monday bright sunshine would come out and it would be warm and beautiful for five days in a row.

Brigid Bergin: The universe was taunting you.

Peter Hull: Exactly.

Brigid Bergin: Peter, can you tell us a little bit about the orchard, how you got into the pick-your-own business, plus why is it not Apple Pete's?

Peter Hull: Well, Apple Dave was my dad and he now supervises from a level higher, but he is the guy who planted all of the apple trees back in the 1940s and '50s. I grew up here but then ran away to New York for a while. As my dad got older, I came back and got more involved in what was going on here and I took over the orchard. Now we have a distillery and we're busy trying to expand out and figure out how we make our orchard into a 12-month business instead of a 14-day business.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Liz, in your reporting, what did you find about how some of these you pick apple farms got their start? Why did this become such an important part of their annual revenue?

Elizabeth Dunn: I think every orchard has its own unique story. Certainly, Apple Dave's has a unique one which is that in the 1970s, unfortunately, Dave's apple storehouse burned to the ground right after the apples had been harvested. He had no crop to sell. The next year he couldn't pay his own pickers or packers, all of that upfront labor, so he just got a bunch of paper bags and sat out on the road and said, "Come pick your own apples," and it just took off.

I think that the more mainstream reason a lot of these orchards ended up in you pick is that really starting in the '90s, it became increasingly hard for smaller orchards to run a business that was reliant on wholesale apple sales, selling to distributors who then sell to a grocery store. The pricing has just been getting tougher and tougher in that wholesale game if you're not a huge operation. For orchards that are close to a major population center like New York, it made a lot of sense to try retailing directly to consumers who would make a day of it and come out to the farm, and you don't pay pickers, people have fun picking the apples. There's a lot of sense in it, I think.

Brigid Bergin: That's so interesting. Let's talk a little bit about what the normal season is for apple picking. Peter, does it usually stretch into November?

Peter Hull: Usually not, typically the apple season as we would define it starts on Labor Day weekend and ends on Halloween. Typically on Halloween, we're all selling pumpkins because all of the apples on a good year are gone by Columbus Day weekend.

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Peter Hull: [crosstalk] The first thing in October. To have lots of apples left in November is quite concerning.

Brigid Bergin: Let's go to Happy in Manhattan. Happy, thanks for calling WNYC. What is your apple picking story?

Happy: Well, we had our own trees. My dad had six dwarf grafted trees, but we were always at the orchard on the weekend because there were candied apples, cider donuts, and other goodies that we could not get because my mom wasn't that good a baker.

Brigid Bergin: Where was this orchard, Happy?

Happy: Well, this is Plattsburgh, New York and it was originally called Edwards Orchard. It was sold when I was in high school and became [unintelligible 00:07:09] Orchard and I believe it's still out there. It was a wonderful childhood experience and we got to climb up to the trees and pick our own apples.

Brigid Bergin: That sounds magical. Happy, thank you so much for your call. Peter, you mentioned that the apples would normally be gone at this point, but what are some of the different ripening times for different apples? Are there any late bloomers that would be particularly good to pick now?

Peter Hull: Sure. Well, we have fujis, which are wonderful this time of year. Jonagolds and Jonamacs are still really good. Of course, the old staple are Red and Golden Delicious, which are a very hardy apple and those will be the last ones that everybody in our orchard will be enjoying.

Brigid Bergin: With this excess of apples, does this mean potentially we're going to have a huge apple cider market this year? What happens with the ones that are still remaining? How do you use them? How do you sell them?

Peter Hull: Well, sadly there's not much you can do because the people who are pick-your-own rely on our customers to come in and pick them all. We don't have bins, we don't have trucks, we don't have pickers, we don't have cold storage facilities. It's a mixed crop this year because there are some people who were hit hard, but there was a frost back on May 18th that really banged up a number of orchards at the beginning of the year.

Those people are out trying to find cider apples, but otherwise, the folks who are pick-your-own, basically my friend on the other side of town is doing midnight pumpkin picking. Everybody is figuring out what they can do to make the season go just a little bit longer and then we'll sit down and scratch our heads and figure out how to expand out into the weekdays next year.

Brigid Bergin: Liz, are the orchards that sell to farmer's markets or stores in better shape than these pick-your-own farms?

Elizabeth Dunn: Broadly speaking, yes. Peter mentioned that there was this weather event in May which if an apple freezes or a blossom freezes, then it's done. The blossom freezes, the apple will not come. So there was this frost event that messed with apple farmers in May, but if you are using a commercial apple picking crew, I don't know if they're happy to, but they do pick rain or shine.

The rain hasn't actually damaged the crop per se or made it hard for professional pickers to get the crop in, it's just been this I think tremendously bad luck of the rain coming on-- the days when the public would normally be your pickers, and Happy, the earlier caller, made an interesting point too, which is that when people come to these orchards, the draw is the apple picking, but now many of these places do so much more. They have apple cider donuts, they have corn mazes, hay rides. I've seen enormous playgrounds, live music, festivals. The farms that have not been able to welcome guests on weekends are not only missing out on the business for their apples, but this whole other suite of offerings they provide.

Brigid Bergin: Liz, because of that, Peter started to allude to this, but have you heard that any of these farmers that do rely on the you pick model are making some changes to their business model going forward?

Elizabeth Dunn: Well, I think these are conversations that are going to happen over the kitchen table this winter once the season winds down, but I think there are already farms who even before this season have been thinking about how to extend the business beyond this two-month period. I spoke to one orchard, Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard, and they, a few years ago, started a holiday light experience so that they would have people coming to the farm in November and December. Many do also offer spring strawberry picking, vegetable picking in the summer. They do offer other tourist draws, it's just that these two months happens to be the time when something clicks for people and they decide it's time to go out and experience a farm.

Brigid Bergin: Well, I think Jude in the West Village, did you just go apple-picking for the first time?

Jude: Yes, I'm a senior and just went for the very first time, of course, posted one social and found out that everybody in the whole world has done this as a child or sometime in their lives. I got together with my good friend Mark and he had never done it. He has a car so we ended up driving up to Warwick Valley Winery, Distillery & Orchard. Of course, we went on a weekday, so we had a glorious weather day. The sun was shining. I think we went on a Thursday, and it couldn't have been a more perfect day for photos for apple picking.

We had a great lunch there. We did a cider tasting for $8. We tasted six or seven or however many little tastes of different ciders. Went home with some and a bag of apples, made apple sauce for the first time, came out great. Gave some to Halloween trick or treaters, gave a few away to the building staff. My friend made apple tarts or [chuckles] pastries that were great. We ended up each-- we were going to share a bag, but then he said, no, I want my own bag so we ended up each having 20 pounds of apples.

I learned so much. I found a new variety of apple that I had never known about, and it was just wonderful. Found out it was from England and found out that it won in 1918 or whenever, it won a blind tasting apple award. I guess my taste buds knew what they were doing.

Brigid Bergin: Jude, thank you so much for your call. I'm glad you had such a wonderful apple-picking experience. Jude was the promotional material that we all need for why everyone should go apple-picking. In just our last few minutes, Peter, tell us how do people find Apple Dave's Orchards and distillery if they have not made their plans this weekend and want to head up there?

Peter Hull: Sure. Well, we are very easy. We're just appledaves.com or you'll find us on Instagram, Facebook. We're very easy to get to and the distillery will be featuring cocktails made with our exclusive applejack, which is made by freezing it, so it's real applejack, not just apple brandy.

Brigid Bergin: Well, that sounds--

Peter Hull: We will have apple cider donuts, we'll have our kitchen going, and we're hoping for a beautiful sunny weekend.

Brigid Bergin: That sounds great. Liz, since your podcast, Pressure Cooker, is all about feeding the family, do you have a quick and easy apple recipe to share?

Elizabeth Dunn: Yes, absolutely. Jude mentioned applesauce and apple tarts. If you do either of those things, you're going to end up with a lot of apple peels. A really fun thing to do with your kids if you have kids, or you can do it alone if you don't, is just toss those apple peels with some olive oil, some sugar, and some cinnamon, and put them in a really low oven, around 170 if you can get it that low, wait for them to get dehydrated and crispy and you've got a healthy, fun, little apple snack.

Brigid Bergin: That sounds wonderful. We are going to have to leave it there today. My thanks to Elizabeth Dunn, a journalist who covers the intersection of food, business, and culture, and co-hosts the podcast Pressure Cooker, and to Peter Hull, owner of Apple Dave's in Warwick, New York. Thanks so much for joining us. I hope it stays dry this weekend.

Peter Hull: We do too.

Elizabeth Dunn: Thanks for having me.

Brigid Bergin: You've been listening to The Brian Lehrer Show. Producers are Lisa Allison, Mary Croke, Amina Srna, Carl Boisrond and Esperanza Rosenbaum. Our intern this fall is [unintelligible 00:15:39] Zach Gottehrer-Cohen takes care of our podcast. Megan Ryan is the head of Live Radio. Juliana Fonda and Milton Ruiz are at the audio controls. I'm Brigid Bergin. This is The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Thank you for listening. Have a great, hopefully dry weekend. Don't forget to change your clocks and good luck to all our listeners running the New York City Marathon on Sunday.

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