Had a sad visit on Sunday because the varieties which we were interested in (and which they said on their website they were picking) were pretty much gone. At the PYO booth, after we paid they said some of those varieties were "enh" (rotate hand back and forth) mostly picked out. Get into the orchard and there was a lot of staring at trees that had no apples and finding apples that were the last on the tree but rotting or very lumpy. We ended up filling our bag with apples we wouldn't have normally picked, and for some varieties we just couldn't find any edible ones. (So we'll have to go back to the farm stand in Bolton where we are kicking ourselves for not buying Mutsu when we had the chance.)
There are a lot of Macintosh and Red Delicious here, which are not worth picking because they are easily found at the supermarket year round, and Red Delicious are red but definitely not delicious. (They are probably bred more for their shelf life than flavor, and I feel the point of PYO is to get apples that are too fragile or low-volume for the supermarket but have great flavor.) We happened by here because we were in the neighborhood and short on time, and I was like, "oh, PYO places are probably more or less the same, not sure why we were afraid to try someplace new". And now I am realizing the work we put into finding our favorite place (Cider Hill Farm in Amesbury) was worth it, and we'll definitely be sticking to that in the future. Maybe Cider Hill is better at stopping PYO for a given variety before they hit the bottom of the barrel, or maybe it's just that they have more varieties available when we typically go?
On the plus side, at George Hill Orchards there are gorgeous views of the surrounding hills, the fall leaves of the surrounding forest look spectacular during harvest season, and they have some goats and pigs and chickens you can feed if you like, and a playground for children. Also actual running-water restrooms attached to what seems to be the family home at the top of the hill. The hayride can't be all that long given the size of the place, and it's not necessary anyway given the orchards are very close to the parking lot. It was relatively quiet and lacking in many customers. I did really like their cute apple-shaped entryway. They also have a web-based interactive map that lets you see your position in the orchards and what varieties you were picking. This made navigating to the right corner of the farm relatively easy, but I still had to go and count the rows...not sure my GPS always accurately placed me and we may have gotten different apple varieties than what we intended. Just putting signs with the varieties at the ends of the rows would go a long way toward making it easy to find varieties of interest. It's a lot more pleasant to be looking at the scenery than a phone, and my husband would occasionally say "ooo, what kind of apples are these?" and it would take me a while to figure that out. read more