Newsletter

Dear Friends;

Greetings from the Wilkens Family!! Our 93rd harvest season will soon arrive, and we will be delighted to greet you to share in our local-grown bounty from our farm - just up the road in the green hills of northern Westchester County.

This year has been a very busy one and we were pleased to celebrate two June weddings on the farm – one family and one friend as we shared our glorious setting on top of one of Westchester’s highest ridges with their guests. Katrina graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelors Degree in Civil Engineering, spent the summer interning for Thorton-Tomasetti and will be returning to Cornell this fall for her Masters in Structural Engineering. Mom and most of her daughters traveled to Egypt to climb the pyramids and cruise on the Nile River – quite a difficult place to grow apples! Our family is sorry to report that Jerry (Tricia’s husband and your always cheerful tractor driver) experienced his final healing in February from colon cancer and will be looking down from heaven on all of us, particularly during harvest season to make sure that everyone is having fun and doing it right – he certainly will be missed by all.

This summer we were LUCKY- enough to duck from most of the frequent hailstorms and we expect to have plenty of apples. The growing season was exceptionally wet – so the apples will be larger and juicier for your enjoyment! New this year will be Pick-Your-Own PEACHES & NECTARINES (if you come early enough)!! We will start Saturday, August 29th picking 5 varieties of peaches and 2 varieties of nectarines plus a few Gravenstein and crunchy Gala apples as long as they last.

The apple harvest this year will begin with juicy McIntosh as well as a NEW ORCHARD that will be producing some additional varieties on shorter semi-dwarf trees – making them easier to reach – so come try Marshall Macs, Red Free, Gala and Red Cort apples. Next we will move into the crisp Cortlands and old-fashioned tart Baldwins – with another NEW ORCHARD of Empires, Macouns and Jonagolds. We will end in October with the sweet Red and Golden Delicious, tangy Jonagolds, Fujis, and the wonderful Idareds. All of these will be available by the peck (¼ bushel) or ½ bushel as they ripen on Fridays and weekends in our Pick-Your-Own Orchards or any day in smaller quantities in our Farm Market. Our market is also stocked with some of our 30! other varieties of apples as they ripen during the season, along with pure Honey, Maple Syrup and a fine selection of fruit preserves, butters and spreads. Not to be forgotten, Pure Natural Apple Cider, freshly pressed in our own mill, will be available just as soon as enough apples ripen to give our cider just the right taste, flavor and fragrance combination. We never need to add any sweeteners to our cider, as Mother Nature provides just the right amount – and we’re sure you’ll agree.

Don’t forget to stop at TRICIA’S TREATS for an apple-cider donut to taste or to pick up a FRESH-baked apple pie for dinner. And, upstairs in the Red Barn, (above the Farm Market) is the Appleseed Shop where country gift items abound! Remember that you can place your apple or fruit pie order early for the holidays and schedule pick-up at your convenience!

In October we will also open our Pick-Your-Own Pumpkin Patch for your perfect Halloween Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins and our market will have the sweet “sugar” pie pumpkins.

As an early reminder, our shapely Christmas Trees, in sizes from 5 to 10 feet in height will be ready for cutting daily starting Saturday, November 28th. Plan now for your holiday outing in the beginning of December, when you can choose from our own first prize Choose-and-Cut Douglas Firs, or from our pre-cut Fraser Firs. Demand for these perfect trees is high so come early for the finest selection.

As usual, please call before coming to the Pick-Your-Own Orchards on a particular weekend to be sure the availability of the fruit you prefer. The orchards are open Friday, Saturdays and Sundays from 10 to 5PM (with the last tractor going out to the orchard at 4:30PM), and on some school holidays (9/7, 9/28, 10/12 & 10/21) while our Red Barn Farm Market, Appleseed Shop and Tricia’s Treats Bake Shop are open daily from 11 to 5PM. We look forward to visiting with you very soon. Please note that for public health reasons, we are regrettably unable to welcome your dogs into our orchards or shops.