…By hand. As Emma is showing in the picture above, each apple is picked, one by one and placed in our pick baskets. Once our baskets are full, we take them by wagon to our washing station. Then we wash, sort, and pack the apples into tubs so that they can be stacked and stored in our walk-in cooler.
So, assuming an average apple might weigh a half pound (which might be considered a bit of an understatement by anyone who’s seen our Zestar!, Honeycrisp, or Candycrisp), that ends up being somewhere between 70 to 80,000 individual apples each carefully picked, packed, and stacked to bring to our customers at markets in Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, Iowa City, and Marion.
This week we’re just reaching the peak of our apple harvest for this year. We’ve been busy picking Honeycrisp, Sweet Sixteen, Gala, Fuji, Cortland, Jonagold, Jonafree, Senshu, Arlet (aka Swiss Gourmet), Valstar, and Crimson Crisp. We’ll harvest more than 40 varieties of apples before frost sets in by late October. With so many to choose from, it can be hard to pick a favorite. But we’ve each got our own, hopefully we’ve got at least one that can be your favorite too!