In September 2020, I took my kids apple picking at a quiet little orchard in Massachusetts called Windy Hill Farm. It was our first weekend away from home since the start of the pandemic. The trees were dripping with so much fruit it looked like they were wearing bejeweled capes. My son was 10 and my daughter was 13, and as they ran and played and scooped, the fears I had about the virus, the changing world, and the terrible news dissipated. At home that evening, my daughter made apple chips which we ate for dessert and breakfast.

Four years later, as the deadline to apply to college approaches, time seems like a breeze. Our apple picking tradition seemed like something not to be missed, but choosing an orchard near us, outside of Philadelphia, was trickier than expected. A farm we once loved is now offering a “Premium Package” admission price of $31.99 per person, which includes a quarter-beak picking bag, corn maze, hay ride and goat food. (The apple cannon, which shoots apples at targets, costs extra.) Another farm nearby doesn’t charge an entrance fee — hay rides, mini-golf, face painting, and their apple cannons are on hand. map – but even if we skip those extras, there are usually so many people that parking is akin to a duel to the death.

Farms like these, offering what is now called “agro-entertainment,” have transformed apple picking from a simple activity into one that can resemble visiting a theme park. Some people might consider this kind of spectacle (or apple picking of any kind) trivial. “Outdoor cosplay with us!” ” THE Saturday evening live actor Aidy Bryant said in a 2019 sketch parodying the harvest experience. But going to a farm every fall, even if it’s not the most tranquil orchard, can offer more than it seems at first glance: a ritual, an encounter with nature and a connection with nature. ‘history.

The apple is closely linked to American culture. Apple is the first word that many schoolchildren associate with the letter A. It’s the main ingredient in our ultimate pie, the key to keeping the doctor away (according to an aphorism), and, of course, our most popular phone brand. In a way that many Americans may not realize, apples are also “part of the fabric of our history,” said Mark Richardson, who works at the New England Botanical Garden in Massachusetts, and who led the restoration of its historic apple orchard. Me. In the 17th century, for example, alcoholic apple cider was an incredibly popular drink in America. Children even drank a diluted version, often considered safer than water.

Read: Wild apples

Today, farms across America, including apple orchards, are under threat. At the founding of the country, agriculture was the main the most common way to earn a living. But over the past hundred years, the number of farms in the country has declined significantly. According to the Ministry of Agriculturein 1935, the United States had 6.8 million farms; in 2023, it had 1.89 million. The reasons for this decline are multiple. Many farmers have left the profession to settle in cities, and some of the younger generations have chosen not to take over family farms. Policy changes and financial hurdles have chased away the others.

Running a farm can be expensive and difficult work. Production and labor costs can be high. For small farms, including The USDA defines like those earning less than $350,000 in income each year, it is difficult to compete with large farms and international operations. And for any farmer, there is no guarantee that they will have a viable crop to sell at the end of a season. Elizabeth Ryan, an apple grower and owner of Breezy Hill Orchard in New York’s Hudson Valley, told me her farm lost nearly $1 million last year because of frost in May. . Climate change is making growing apples more difficult. Fire blight, caused by a bacterial pathogen active in warmer temperatures, can decimate orchards, Richardson told me. “I don’t think there’s a better example of the impact of climate change on an agricultural crop,” he said. As temperatures continue to rise, fire blight could get worse. more widespread.

In this uncertain economic landscape, many small farmers, looking for new forms of income, have chosen to turn their farms into full-fledged recreational experiences, like the ones I saw when I was looking for a farm to visit. This type of agritainment has “literally saved farms,” Ryan told me, although she said her orchard largely sticks to the basics. Andre Tougas, a second-generation farmer who owns Tougas Family Farm in Northborough, Mass., told me that his farm focuses primarily on the for-pick experience, but has also expanded its offerings to attract visitors beyond the short window of apple season. He offers wagon rides under apple blossoms in spring and grows strawberries and other fruits that visitors can pick from spring to fall. Once the picking period is over, the farm also continues to sell its own apples, which are usually special varieties not found in most grocery stores: Rosalees, Ambrosias, Ludacrisps. For the past two years, one of the farm’s busiest days has been December, Tougas said, a few weeks after apple season officially ends, just before it closes for the winter.

Before speaking with Ryan and Tougas, I only spent about one day a year on a farm. I had understood so little about the life and struggles of a farmer, and nothing about the lengths that farms had to go through to survive. Today, I feel lucky to be able to visit any farm, even ones with mini golf and apple cannons. Activities that once seemed pointless and carnivalesque now seem more vital. And even on farms with all the bells and whistles, you can still create a tradition of escaping into nature and finding a quiet place to linger in the orchard.

I’ve always been there in autumn, when time passes in a final burst of color: the leaves transform into vibrant shades, the fruits swell, the plants go dormant. Ryan told me that every fall his farm welcomes visitors who “come when they’re engaged, come back when they’re pregnant, and come back when they have a little kid… We feel very connected to the people.” These connections – with other humans, with the natural world – are particularly valuable given that we spend so much of our lives in a “digital landscape,” Timothy Erdmann, horticulturist at Chanticleer Garden, a public garden in Pennsylvania where I give sometimes writing lessons, he told me. When you buy entry to an orchard, he said, “you’re buying the right to forget what you heard on the radio when you go to the farm.”

I go with my children because I love spending time outside as a family, away from our screens, and because I feel like we are creating memories that my children will keep for a long time. “Memory is extremely complicated,” Lisa Damour, a psychologist and author whose books and podcast on raising teens have helped me get through the pandemic, told me. But whether or not my kids remember the apple orchard, they’ll probably enjoy the trip, Damour said, because “what the kids really want is our presence without an agenda above all else” — knowing that their parents can let go . the pressures of modern life and simply “enjoying” it. When she said that, I thought about how rarely the advice I’d read about teen parenting mentioned fun. And it made me think about how my mother raised me.

The fall of my 18th birthday was the last one I had with my mother. She became ill very suddenly in December, and a few weeks later was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her liver. She died nine days after diagnosis. Today, more than 30 years after his death, I barely remember picking apples together. But I can imagine the Mason jars of cinnamon applesauce she made afterward and her apple crisp, which we ate for dessert and breakfast. And I remember his joy for the world and for me.

This year my kids and I ended up going to the nearby farm with a terribly crowded parking lot. We wandered past mountains of pumpkins and squash and laughed at their names: Lunch Lady, Pink Porcelain Doll, Heap of Happy Harvest. We took a hayride through the orchards and splurged on a “Harvest Float,” a cider slushie swirled with vanilla ice cream and topped with a cider donut, like a hat. It was outrageously delicious. We also walked among the trees, and when we did, my teenage son and daughter both held my hand. This confirmed to me the truth of something Ryan had said during our conversation: when people go apple picking, “I don’t think it’s really about getting the apples.”