Looking for Apple Orchards Near You and Apple Recipes in 2024?  Scroll down this page and  follow the links. And if you bring home some fruit or vegetables and want to can, freeze, make jam, salsa or pickles, see this page for simple, reliable, illustrated canning, freezing or preserving directions. There are plenty of other related resources, click on the resources dropdown above.  If you are having a hard time finding canning lids, I've used these, and they're a great price & ship in 2 days.

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Apple Orchards Near You and Apple Recipes

Apple Orchards

See these pages to find a local pick your own apple orchard!

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Apple Orchards with pumpkins:

See these pages to find a local pick your own apple orchard that also has pumpkins!

[ Arkansas ] [ Arizona ] [ California ] [ Colorado ] [ Connecticut ] [ Delaware ] [ Georgia ] [ Idaho ] [ Illinois ] [ Indiana ] [ Iowa ] [ Kansas ] [ Kentucky ] [ Maine ] [ Massachusetts ] [ Michigan ] [ Minnesota ] [ Mississippi ] [ Missouri ] [ Montana ] [ Nebraska ] [ Nevada ] [ New Hampshire ] [ New Jersey ] [ New York ] [ North Carolina ] [ North Dakota ] [ Ohio ] [ Oklahoma ] [ Oregon ] [ Pennsylvania ] [ Rhode Island ] [ South Dakota ] [ Tennessee ] [ Texas ] [ Vermont ] [ Virginia ] [ Washington ] [ WestVirginia ] [ Wisconsin ]

Canning apples - fully illustrated, with step-by-step instructions

• How to make applesauce
• How to make apple butter 
• NEW: How to make apple jelly
• How to make apple pie filling (canned)
• How to can apples

Recipes, illustrated with step by step instructions

• Apple pie recipe and directions and illustrated! I can say, with, ahem, no bias at all, that this is the best apple pie recipe in the world! (Alright, I did have an apple strudel in Vienna once at that place listed in Fodors that was REALLY good, but that wasn't a pie, was it? And since this was the recipe my grandmother used, it must be great!)
• How to make applesauce for a single meal (not canning it) with NO special equipment
• Apple crunch - best of all! Moist, low sugar and using oats!
• Apple crisp - ever-popular, low sugar and using oats!
• Apple, blackberry, cherry, and/or peach cobbler
• Apple-blackberry, crumble - a English favorite (or favourite)

• And the many apple associations listed on this page have more facts and resources

Apple Facts

Apples are eaten fresh, cooked, canned, frozen and made into many tasty and healthy dishes. Apples are fat-free, low sodium, and cholesterol-free. A bushel weighs between 42 and 48 lbs. A medium apple has about 80 calories. Apples originated in the Middle East (in an area between the Caspin and the Black Sea) more than 4000 years ago! They were the favorite fruit of ancient Greeks and Romans. Apples arrived in England at around the time of the Norman conquest (in 1066) and English settlers brought them to America in the 1600 and 1700's.  Only the crabapple is native to North America. Johnny Appleseed did really exist; his name was John Chapman, and he was born on September 26,1774 near Leominster, Massachusetts.  (For more about Johnny Appleseed, see this page!)

More Apple Facts and Fun!

• A bushel of apples typically weighs between 42 and 48 lbs.
• Apples are grown commercially in 36 states.
• Apples are grown in all 50 states.
• Europeans eat about 46 pounds of apples annually.
• United States consumers ate an average of 45.2 pounds of fresh apples and processed apple products. That's a lot of applesauce!
• 61 percent of United States apples are eaten as fresh fruit.
• 39 percent of apples are processed into apple products; 21 percent of this is for juice and cider.
• The top apple producing states are Washington, New York, Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and Virginia, which produced over 83 percent of the nation's 2001-crop apple supply.
• Apples are a great source of the fiber pectin. One apple has five grams of fiber.
• In 2001 there were 8,000 apple growers with orchards covering 430,200 acres. (don't know how many of those are PYO).
• The pilgrims planted the first United States apple trees in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• Apple trees take four to five years to produce their first fruit, but you normally buy 2 or 3 year plants at the nursery, so it's only 2 years till they produce!
• Most apples are still picked by hand in the fall.
• Apple varieties range in size from a little larger than a cherry to as large as a grapefruit.
• In Europe, France, Italy and Germany are the leading apple producing countries.
• Apples are a member of the rose family.
• Apples harvested from an average tree can fill 20 bushel boxes that weigh 42 pounds each.
• 25 percent of an apple's volume is air. That is why they float.
• It takes the energy from 50 leaves to produce one apple.
• Apples are the second most valuable fruit grown in the United States. Oranges are first.
• In colonial time apples were called winter banana or melt-in-the-mouth.
• China is the leading producer of apples with over 1.2 billion bushels grown in 2001. The U.S. is number 2 and then Turkey, Poland and Italy.
• Newton Pippin apples were the first apples exported from America in 1768, some were sent to Benjamin Franklin in London.
• One of George Washington's hobbies was pruning his apple trees.
• America's longest-lived apple tree was reportedly planted in 1647 by Peter Stuyvesant in his Manhattan orchard and was still bearing fruit when a derailed train struck it in 1866.
• A bushel of apples weights about 42 pounds (up to 48 lbs) and will yield 12 to 15 quarts of applesauce.
• It takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider.
• Finally, if you have an apple tree and want to know what variety it is, see this page.

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It's all about the variety!

Of the apple, that is.  There are

• 2500 varieties of apples are grown in the United States.
• 7500 varieties of apples are grown throughout the world.
• About 100 different varieties of apples are grown commercially in the United States.

You really need to choose the type of apple that is best suited for your purpose.  Apples can be suited for eating fresh, cooking, baking, applesauce, storing, etc.  I have a fairly extensive guide to apple varieties here!

The top ten apple varieties currently grown in the United States are:

1. Red Delicious
2. Gala
3. Golden Delicious
4. Fuji
5. Granny Smith
6. McIntosh
7. Honeycrisp
8. Rome
9. Empire
10. Cripps Pink

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Apple nutrition facts

• Nutrition and miscellaneous facts: One-half cup of apples is only 42 calories. Apples contain no cholesterol or fat and are also low in calories. T Apples are high in dietary fiber, Vitamin A and niacin. They contain iron and other trace minerals and are a fair source of Vitamin C. 
• Apples are ranked No. 1 in antioxidant activity compared with 40 other commercially available fruits and vegetables. That means a serving of apples has more of the antioxidant power you need to fight aging, cancer and heart disease.
• Put this in your pipe! Indians in the Northwest Territory smoked wild apples to preserve them for the winter. (Bet you didn't know that!)

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Current Season (2024) Apple News

The U.S. Apple Association's estimate of the size of the  United States apple crop between 240 and 270  million bushels.

 

See this page for much more detailed information about the apple crop and apple production trends.

 

Apples—Average retail price per pound or pint and per cup equivalent, 2020
Form	Average retail price		Preparation yield factor	Size of a cup equivalent		Average price per cup equivalent
Fresh1 -	$1.52	per pound	0.9	0.243	pounds	$0.41
Applesauce2 -	$1.07	per pound	1	0.540	pounds	$0.58
Juice
Ready to drink3 -	$0.78	per pint	1	8	fl. oz.	$0.39
Frozen4 -	$0.59	per pint	1	8	fl. oz.	$0.29
1 - The USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (SR) reports that the inedible stem and core of a raw apple account for 10 percent of the fruit's weight, implying a preparation yield of 90 percent, when apples are eaten raw including the peel.
2 - Excludes applesauce packed in individual containers that are 4 ounces in size or smaller. Includes flavors like "original," "cinnamon," "plain," "unsweetened," "old fashioned," "homestyle," "sweetened," and "brown sugar cinnamon." Excludes certain other flavors like "strawberry," "honey cinnamon," "peach," and "maple."
3 - Includes refrigerated and unrefrigerated juice.
4 - Includes juice sold as frozen concentrate. The consumer reconstitutes this juice after purchase by adding three containers of water per container of concentrate. Retail price is dollars per pint after reconstitution.
Source: USDA, Economic Research Service calculations from 2020 Circana (formerly Information Resources, Inc. [IRI]) OmniMarket Core Outlets (formerly InfoScan) data; the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (SR), Legacy Release; and the Food Patterns Equivalents Database (FPED) 2017–18 as well as the FPED's accompanying Methodology and User Guide.

 

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Apple Festivals

Here is a list of major apple festivals in the U.S., Britain, Australia and other countries. If you know of any more, please write me! Feedback