Apple-picking looks different this season after “devastating year" for orchards

In the 41 years that Brian Smith has been running Solebury Orchards in New Hope, Pennsylvania, he’s almost always had good luck with his apples. On some occasions, maybe he’s lost 10% or 20% of his crop to weather or disease, but never more than that. Until this year.

This year, for the first time ever, he had almost no apples on any of his trees across 90 acres. He had few peaches or pears, too.

“It was a devastating year,” Smith said. “The apple crop was pretty much 100% gone. Though OK, there were a few apples here and there to be found. The peach crop, I think across 10 acres, we saw actually two peaches.”

Back in April, northeast Pennsylvania got a string of unseasonably hot 80- to 90-degree days. Then, the temperature dropped to 23 degrees. All the flowers and fruitlets, the tiny beginnings of peaches and apples and pears that had started to grow, froze.

Similar weather patterns played out across much of the Mid-Atlantic, Northeast, and Midwest, decimating apple and peach crops. Orchards in Pennsylvania were hit particularly hard — the state lost more than 80% of its peaches and nearly 60% of its apples, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. At some, like Solebury, it was almost everything.

For Smith, losing the apples, in particular, was a huge hit.

“Most of our income comes from our apple crop. Pick-your-own apples is a big, big part of our season,” he said. “Apple-picking is very popular, so people love to come out in the fall.”

In addition to apple-picking, Solebury also sells apples, both at their own market and wholesale, to other stores, and uses them to make all sorts of other products, like apple sauce, apple cider, and cider donuts.

Walking the orchard in mid-October, it’s possible to spot a few apples here and there on the trees, but most branches are empty.

That’s disappointing for some people who come to go apple picking, according to Nathaniel Woosley, who helps manage the orchard.

“Even though we've tried to put it out on our website, on social media, there are still a number of people who come, and they are very unaware. Because one cold night in April doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people,” he said. “They're not realizing that that means no apples on the trees here. So there has been some disappointment, especially when they arrive, and they're not aware of that situation.”

For the most part, though, people are understanding. And Woosley and Smith came up with some different experiences for people who visit the orchard this year.

“When we realized we didn't have an apple crop, we decided, well, we should probably do some other things,” Woosley said.

They planted a pumpkin patch for people to pick their own pumpkins, and started working with the local library and a neighbor with a trolley to host story time for kids.

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They also bought tons of apples from orchards in upstate New York and put massive bins of them out among the trees to offer customers at least some semblance of an apple-picking experience, since that’s what most people come for.

“Each bin holds like 800 pounds of apples,” Smith said. “We’ll forklift them out in between the apple rows, and the customers will pick from the bins instead of picking from the trees. Sort of the best we can do at this point.”

It felt important to still offer people a way to come spend time in the orchard, he said, given how much of a fall tradition apple-picking is for so many people.

Katie Wheelan makes a point of doing it every year with her daughter, who’s almost 5.

“We’re not letting the freeze take that away from us this year,” she said. “But it definitely looks a bit different.”

She had no idea, until they arrived at the orchard on a recent Thursday, that they wouldn’t find apples on the trees, but decided to stay anyway.

“I mean, it's a beautiful day, beautiful apples,” Wheelan said. “So yeah, not hard to stay and just pick what we can, right?”

Joy Grinoch and her friends Rose Navasquez, Melissa Greenberg, and Era Frylang didn’t know what the deal was, either, when they arrived at Solebury after lunch. Like Wheelan, they were expecting to find apples on the trees and were a little disappointed to learn they wouldn’t, Grinoch said. “But hey, it is what it is, right?”

“Yeah, we still need to enjoy,” Greenberg added.

“We got good weather,” Grinoch said. “There’s nothing [more] we can ask.”

That is Brian Smith’s main goal for this year: to keep his customers as happy as possible.

Having to buy apples from other orchards for the pick-your-own and to be able to keep supplying their wholesale customers and making their cider, sauce, and donuts doesn’t leave much room to actually make money — unless they raise prices, which Smith doesn’t want to do. And they’re getting maybe half to three-quarters as many visitors this fall as they have in recent years.

“By the time this year is done, I don't know if there will be any profit at all,” he said.

Even if they just break even, it’s worth it to not lose customers they’ve spent years cultivating. And the last few years have been good — profitable enough that the business should be able to make it through one bad one.

“I think, you know, to be a grower, you're optimistic, and you're always looking forward to the next year,” Smith said. “The seasons keep rolling around, and we'll still be here, and the apple trees will still be here, and with a little luck, they’ll have fruit next year.”'