N.J. welcomes autumn with an abundance of apples
Local orchards offer pick-your-own, cider and other fruity delights
BY JENNIFER KOHLHEPP
Staff Writer

Clockwise from left - Apples cover the ground beneath the trees that Joseph and Melissa DeLuca and John and Jennifer Bommanito are picking fruit at the Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor.

Sweet and delicious on their own or even better in sauce, salad, strudel or pie, apples are now ripe for picking at New Jersey orchards.

And, oh what a season the red, yellow and green autumnal fruits are having. This season, apples in New Jersey orchards are generally larger than normal and have the best flavoring and overall quality in years, according to Pegi Adam, of the New Jersey Farm Bureau.

As of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2002 Agriculture Census, New Jersey had more than 2,600 acres and 525 farms growing apples. Most of the acreage (68 percent) is located in the southern third of the state, but central and northern counties each produce about 16 percent of the crop, while Gloucester County leads the state with 48 percent of the production, according to the New Jersey Farm Bureau.

New Jersey's 2005 Fruit Summary for apples from the USDA shows total apple production at 45 million pounds, which was 5 million pounds higher than 2004, according to the state Farm Bureau.

Richard "Dick" Lee stands in front of a cart of gourds and squashes that his family has for sale at the farm.

Apple grower expectations for the 2006 season are better than 2005, Adam said.

"Local farmers are very enthusiastic that they'll have wonderful apple and cider sales," she said.

A local pick-your-own farm with a 420-tree apple orchard, the Lee Turkey Farm, owned by Ronny Lee, is 54 acres nestled in the growing suburbia of East Windsor. The Lee family has farmed the same land for six generations, since 1868. Rich in history, the acreage has a farmhouse and wagon house that both date back to 1802.

Many traditions were born on the farm over the years. One that has become the most celebrated is the harvest festival that celebrates the Jewish holiday Sukkot, which begins on the fifth day after Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. This year's festival on the farm started Oct. 9.

A McIntosh apple hangs from a tree in the orchard.

The festival grows yearly. People drive out to the farm from religious communities in Lakewood and in Brooklyn, N.Y., to meet their friends and relatives who live locally. Celebrants of the festival go into Lee's fields and pick the orchard.

With a garden cart and a ladder in tote, Brooklyn residents Jennifer and John Bommarito and Melissa and Joseph DeLuca all roamed through the apple orchard looking for the perfect tree to pick. Most of the trees are marked with red, white and blue ribbons. The Red Delicious and Golden Delicious apple trees didn't have any markings.

The trees with red ribbons have "sweet" fruit on them. The ones with white ribbons are semisweet like McIntosh. Those who go for the blue-ribboned fruit trees pick the sour apples like Stayman Winesaps.

After her husband, Joseph, positioned the ladder in a red-ribboned tree, Melissa climbed up into the limbs and began selecting bright red fruit from a tree that looked like it was exploding with apples.

PHOTOSBY JEFF GRANIT staff At left, Joseph DeLuca tosses a McIntosh apple down to John Bommanito at the Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor on Oct. 9.

"My sister-in-law is the baker," Melissa said. "I'm just picking."

As she chose the fruit, her sister, Jennifer, looked on, saying that it took the two couples about an hour to get to the farm, but the drive was well worth it.

"It's nice to get away from the city for a while," Jennifer said. "It's very peaceful here, and there's nothing like this where we come from."

Jennifer said she has been returning annually to Lee farm to pick apples since she was a kid.

When asked what she's going to use the apples for this year, her husband answered for her, saying, "I think my wife was saying she's going to bake a pie" as he gave her a smile, a nudge and a hug.

Prior to the Great Depression, the Lee farm was called Lee Orchards. What kept the farm alive during the nation's financially trying times was Dick's idea to raise turkeys on it - hence, its current name that incorporates the turkey.

At right, Melissa DeLuca, of Brooklyn, N.Y., picks a juicy one.

The farm still raises 5,000 turkeys annually, but when Ronny took over the farm's operations in the 1960s, he saw a shift in the farming market that led to his decision to plant more fruit-bearing trees on the farm. Ronny said the pick-your-own aspect of the farm is what keeps it successful today.

The Lees began their pick-your-own venture in 1964. At that time, it was one of the first pick-your-own operations on the East Coast, according to Lee's father, Richard "Dick" Lee.

The farm fashioned its pick-your-own operation after a pick-your-own cherry orchard in Michigan that the family had read about. Dick thought if Michigan can do it with cherries, then a New Jersey farm could have a pick-your-own operation with its multitude of apple varieties and other crops.

During its transition into a pick-your-own, the farm ceased its wholesale operations altogether and started selling directly to the customer from the farm stand that still exists today on the property next to the farmhouse. Inside the market, there is a large picture of Ronny as a child standing alongside his great-grandmother and gleefully clutching an apple.

Ronny's favorite apple is the Empire apple, which is very crisp and slightly more tart than Macintoshes. They are good for sauce and pies.

The farm sells many different types of apples including Dick's favorite, the Yellow Transparent. This variety, which is ready for harvest in June, is tart and easy to boil down for making applesauce.

With apples, each variety has its own season, but the apples sold by the Lee farm are usually ready to harvest about one week after Labor Day, according to Dick.

Besides the newer varieties such as Fujis, Jonagolds and Arkansas Blacks, there are the standards like Golden Delicious, which Dick says have great flavor and are good to cook with.

The flavor of the apple depends on the tree's yield, according to Ronny.

Dick said people should not rely on an apple's size or coloring to tell if it will taste good.

"People think big and red, but then they take a few bites," he said, "and they don't want to finish it."

Dick said apples from the West are usually red because of the climate and irrigation systems they are grown with.

"The [western] apples look good, but they don't taste as good," Dick said. "The East apple doesn't have perfect color, but they are much juicier."

When picking apples on the Lee farm, customers should go to the back rows of the orchard, according to Dick, because all the trees in the front of it get picked often.

It doesn't matter what part of the tree people pick the apples from, according to Dick. Just like color, placement has nothing to do with how flavorful apples will be "as long as they are mature and picked at the right time of the year," he said.

Keeping an apple orchard means keeping the pH right, fertilizing, putting lime down and pruning in the orchard throughout the year, according to Ronny. He prunes all the trees himself in the winter starting in January, he said, and finishing before the first apple picking day in April.

The farm has always been a family-owned and family-worked operation. Ronny's wife, Janet, and their three children, Charli, 20, Sadie, 18, and Dylan, 12, all help out and have their own ideas as to what to do with apples.

To make the best pie or any edible apple concoction taste its best, the Lee family suggests using several varieties of apples for any given recipe. For the best apple cider, Dick recommends his secret recipe of throwing a pear into the mix.

Dick's wife, Ruth, said she enjoys making applesauce and apple crisps from the apples on the farm. To make a good pie or crisp, Ruth recommends using both sweet and sour apples because then it's not necessary for the baker to add sugar.

Ronny said his farm's success rests on keeping it family-operated and open to the public.

"Our customers, they get first pick on everything out there," Ronny said, speaking of the crops in his fields. "We don't sell wholesale, so our customers aren't just getting what's left.

"If they're here on the first day of the season," he added, "they get what's available on the first day of the season."

Individuals can register to receive regular updates on what's in season on the Lee farm at the farm's Web site, www.leeturkeyfarm.com.