It now costs more to pick your own apples than to buy them picked

[Fat Guy]

At least that seems to be the case at the farms in the NY/NJ/CT area that offer U-pick apples.

I think that's messed up.

[sickchangeup]

I'm frankly shocked to hear that wasn't always the case. If you go pick them, you get the "experience" & the apples!

[snowangel]

At least that seems to be the case at the farms in the NY/NJ/CT area that offer U-pick apples.

I think that's messed up.

Actually, it's not that messed up. I have a friend whose family owns an apple orchard. U Pick 'Em comes with a couple of problems most of us don't think about.

1. Liability insurance!

2. Waste. If you pick your own, and decide, after taking a bite, you don't like the apple, it's on the ground which is a huge problem at the end of apple season. Don't like the look of the apple? It is a second? It is on the ground. An employee (usually a high school or college age relative) is (probably paid under the table) and sorts them as picked as firsts or seconds.

3. Damage to trees. They are not for climbing on.

4. Got to provide a toilet. Your employees at a regular orchard are probably your relatives and you can just let them use your toilet.

U Pick Em places are largely entertainment farms.

There is more to it than meets the eye!

[maggiethecat]

No, Steven, it's not messed up. Crimminy. You pay more for good stuff prepicked for you at a Farmer's Market, and most folks don't blink an eye about it. At a U-Pick, you can, well, pick: what variety of apple, the week you want to do it, and the folks you want to do it with. What, you're pissed because U-Pick is more expensive than Red Delicious at the supermarket?

[Richard Kilgore]

It's similar to going fishing or hunting. At the super market it probably costs somkewhere between $5 and $25 per pound. Go fishing or hunting and it costs you somewhere between, oh say, $50 and $2,500 per pound.

[peterm2]

I've found that the places I've been to in CT are cheaper picking your own still. But the big "resort"-type places in MA were cheaper to buy pre-picked.

If you're buying pre-picked, you're still sorting through their bins and getting only the best ones. If you're picking your own, they don't have to provide storage space or pay people to go pick them. Maybe the small places here live on the edge without liability insurance.

[dividend]

I don't think this is true around here. Last year I paid like $8 and came away with over 20 lbs of apples. They're not that cheap in the grocery stores here.

[Moopheus]

2. Waste. If you pick your own, and decide, after taking a bite, you don't like the apple, it's on the ground which is a huge problem at the end of apple season.

Or you take and bite and you do like it. So you eat it. It's not paid for. And it's gone. Now, I suppose there's a limit to how many you can eat. I think the last time I did this, it was around seven or eight apples.

On the other hand, we once did pick-your-own strawberries, and came away with 35 pounds (yes!) of berries at what seemed like a reasonable price at the time.

[Fat Guy]

Yesterday and today we made two apple purchases:

Today we went to a U-Pick place in Guilford, Connecticut, called Bishop's Orchards. Research showed this to be the place with the best U-Pick prices in the area, and the best selection of apples. We parked in a field, walked to a place where they gave us a bag, had a tractor pull us and a bunch of other people to the relevant orchard rows, picked apples, rode back, paid $1.05 per pound, paid $10 for the family to go through the hay-bale maze, and left.

Yesterday we went to Stew Leonard's, a large grocery store in Yonkers, New York. For 99 cents a pound they had apples from Blue Hills Farm in Wallingford, Connecticut. They had free hay rides. And at sundown they showed movies in the Hay Bale Theater, including complementary cider, doughnuts and popcorn.

The apples from Stew Leonard's were better.

[rlibkind]

I don't go to a Pick Your Own for Price. I go because I can get an apple I can't find in any store. That's why I made the trip from Phila. to Warwick NY last month for Cox Orange Pippins. I've never seen a store (in U.S.) with this variety, nor a few of the others I've found at Warwick Valley. The cost, iirc, was $20 for a half bushel; I didn't weigh what I picked, but it couldn't have been much over $1/pound; for this tasty hard-to-find variety it's well worth the price.