I think few people do u-pick of any sort because it's cheap. Wandering among the apple trees as the fall colors just start to turn, munching on fresh-as-fresh-gets apples while you "shop"..does it get any better? My wife and I go apple picking every year and it's one of my most cherished rituals and we never have a problem using it all. This year, we devoured so many fresh apples and apple desserts, we didn't even have enough left over to can!

Apple-picking isn't meant to be economical or efficient. If we were trying to be as efficient and economical as possible we'd buy the waxy flavorless apples at the grocery store. Apple-picking is about getting the freshest, juiciest, tastiest apples possible, and so what if you get too many? Apples last for an eternity.

My boyfriend and I went apple picking in Michigan last weekend. Our idea of a romantic autumnal excursion turned out a bit hotter than we had expected (about 85 degrees) so we certainly got our excercise in for the day. Regardless of the temperatures, the activity was fun - and a wonderful day outside, in nature. We are making apple pie this weekend and made pumpkin apple bran muffins on Monday. Also - we scored four gallons of fresh pressed cider for $14.92 (Columbus Day special!) and have been devouring it! So in short, if you are an adventurist, a food lover and still have a bit of that innocent kid left in you - head to an apple orchard this weekend!!

Driving up to the apple farm for freshly harvested apples (I don't do my own picking) isn't intended to save barrels of money -- it's a little day-trip vacation where you take a pretty drive into the hills, and you smell the lovely fresh fruit, and maybe you go to a little antique store in the country, and then you make pie or apple sauce when you get home. You judge the cost-effectiveness compared to other day-trips you could have taken to entertain yourself on a Saturday afternoon, not compared to running to Fry's for the 10-for-$10 price on apples that deserve to be that cheap.

If you can come up with a cool-but-not-freezing storage area, Jim is absolutely right -- your barrel of apples will last the entire winter, just like on Little House on the Prairie.

Apple picking is about apple picking. The $1 a pound I spent on the apples was secondary.

And I am almost through the entire peck of apples, we picked.

The article was so poignant that they had to run it again. I scoff at them.

I hope their kids get apples instead of candy on Halloween. Not because I don't think they are a viable alternative to candy but because they can see first hand how the surplus of apples from their weekend trip to the country are being used. Then again, they probably don't let their kids get candy on Halloween because they would end up with too much and that too would shed some unflattering light on the American economy.

It's sad that Mr. Gross is barking up the wrong (apple) tree but it is not a surprise.

For me, going out to pick apples (or other fruits) is about more than saving money. It's about spending time with my dad, my sister, my fiance, whoever's there that day. It's about knowing exactly where my food is coming from. It's about getting just what I need to make a batch of apple butter or peach-blueberry jam. It's about getting to be outdoors.

It's what I'm going to be doing in about 3 hours. :)

And it's one of those little rituals where I am totally doing the happy dance because we have apple farms in Arizona! The closest one doesn't open for another month, though.

Supermarket apples are widely recognized to be shite; this obviates the argument that apple picking is inferior, from an obtaining-tasty-apples perspective, to buying store apples.

If you store them correctly then the apples will last for months. Personally I love apples, and have been eating 2 or 3 a day! I figure living in a climate that has a short growing season, and considering most fruit you buy at the store cannot be grown locally, I might as well do my part to eat local and fresh produce. Plus it's just damn fun.

Things to do with "tons" of apples:

Make some applesauce
Make an Apple Pancake
If you have a juicer, press some into juice - spike it for a sassy fall cocktail
Give some to the neighbors
Take some into the office

Happy harvesting!

If I am a sucker because would would rather skip out on the mechanized harvesting, sitting for weeks in inventory, packaging, and shipping, then I am happy to be one. I am a sucker because I value the closeness to both the food and the grower more than I value convenience and efficiency. I am a sucker because I am willing to pay more for the privilege of picking (in both senses) my own food. I am a sucker because I bought fresh picked apples that will keep in the cellar for 4 months, instead of the ones at the store that will only last a few weeks. I'll be eating local apples through winter that I picked myself. Local apples at Christmas in stockings? Only if you are a sucker like me.

I spent $3.50/lb. this summer for blueberries because I was could pick them myself. They were local, organic, and I picked the biggest, juiciest that I could find. I am such a sucker.

Cute how he implies Alice Waters bullied America into valuing fresh food. Oh, if only we could go back to the heady days of TV dinners and Sara Lee every night!

A question: do U-pick operations sell unpasteurized apple juice? I'd love to make some hard cider, but I don't have the time or money to make the grinders and presses necessary.

If you don't go overboard, it's not that hard to eat/cook all the apples you collect. :)

I managed to do just this after a trip to a U-pick Apple orchard. Baking involved. :)

Sounds like Slate has hacked its life so far that it forgot how to live. Not to mention their apparent lack of a freezer to put up apple pie filling in Ziplocks that last for years and years.

<soapbox>

in mr. gross's defense, since i read his column all the time and quite like it,

1) he's an economist, so he's writing about economy and marketing, not the hard to measure qualitative value of pleasure (in picking your own apple).

2) he's not trying to get anyone to stop. he opens the article admitting he picks apples too. he must enjoy it like the rest of us, or he wouldn't do it.

3) everything he points out is reasonable and true in it's context. again, no reason to stop, he's just presenting us with food for thought. having grown up in a rural area where people often turned to "tourist farming" to make a living, i can wholeheartedly sympathize with him pointing out how consumerist people can be when they show up to ride their hayride, pick their apples and pumpkins, blow a wad on jams and pies, and then take off in their weighted down SUVs. he's right, they're not communing with nature, they're conquering and consuming it.

4) in the comments about people letting their excess produce rot, i believe he's speaking to the general public, not those of us who love food so much that we haunt kitchen-related blogs. outside of the sphere of foodies, people do indeed buy a bushel of apples they can't eat and won't can...and worse, they'll put them in the city garbage because they don't compost. not everyone is like us. a lot of people who go to tourist farms are buying the experience, and they don't give a flying flip about the apples once they bring them home.

4) it's never bad to be able to say, "yeah, when you look at it that way, you're right. but i'm still gonna pick my apples." without degrading the idea (or the person) you didn't agree with.

the unexamined life is not worth living...that includes examining the perhaps unintended consequences of driving out into the "country" and picking a peck of x,y,z.

</soapbox>

Of course the apple trees are not the same as the ones that may or may not existed in the Garden of Eden. Those would have been inedible to us. Apples trees are one positive example of a genetically modified crop. It's human interest, farm tourist or grocery store shopper that keeps them in existence. But I digress...

It's just funny to me that what the author is part of the very situation he is essentially criticizing in a condescending way.

The message I get is that instead of rising above the hopelessness of the economic system exemplified by the apple orchard he just gives in and his family eats the 12 apples and lets the rest rot rather than finding a resourceful way to invest those apples for the future. Why bother when there is no hope anyways?

Maybe the article is not really about apples per se, but it is the author's diatribe worthy of criticism, especially if it gets run year after year.

gee, Daniel Gross sounds a bit sour.
We drove to NY to pick apples every year when I was a child -- and we used them all (ten or so bushels.) The minute we got home, production started -- baking apple cakes for the freezer, and canning dozens of quarts of applesauce.
It was quite cheap and efficient too, since we'd pick "the drops" for apples sauce. The farmer had professional pickers for the trees, and let the home cooks in for all the gorgeous apples knocked to the ground. Then when we were done, they'd scoop everything up and make cider

So, Jim, orchards are def. a place to go for the unpasteurized cider (that you can leave out to turn "hard"). Health food stores and farmers markets tend to carry it too, at least in NYC.
Love your comment on Alice Waters v Sara Lee. :)

I paid $9 for half a bushel of mixed apples this is somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 apples. I bought one honeycrisp at the grocey store and it cost me a buck fifty. Seems like a deal to me. I think the problem is that a bag of red delicious does not equal a bag of your favorite variety from the u-pick. I also think the Slate author probably doesn't cook, thus the too many apples, I've already made two cakes, a dozen caramel apples and I the ones that are left are ear-marked for a tart.