APPLE PICKING Collecting those memories

For many families, the annual visit to North Carolina isn't about the fruit.
FLAT ROCK, N.C. (AP) -- Even before the calendar officially says it's autumn, it feels like fall at Sky Top Orchard in North Carolina's Western mountains.
Gala and Honeycrisp apples -- among the earliest varieties to ripen -- are ready in early September and the 10-week harvest season is well under way by the middle of the month. School groups, families with kids, couples out for an afternoon -- all will come to the top of Mount McAlpine (altitude 3,000 feet) to pick apples, go for a hayride, walk the trails and take in the Blue Ridge views.
Owner David Butler knows he isn't just selling pieces of fruit, but memories.
The farm setting, the sense of being close to nature, and even, for kids, the bugs and the dirt, are all part of the attraction. Weddings have been held at Sky Top. And families that come back year after year can literally mark the passage of time by measuring their children's growth against a sign in front of the main barn that reads, "How Tall This Fall?"
For many visitors, it's also a nostalgic journey. "It wasn't the taste of the apple they remembered, it was going out with their parents to pick," Butler observed.
Henderson County, where Sky Top is located, is the heart of North Carolina apple country, with a mix of loamy soil and mountain altitude that is ideal for growing apples, said Marvin Owings Jr., agricultural extension agent for the county. Dozens of orchards line U.S. 64 between Hendersonville and Edneyville, where traffic slows to a crawl on autumn weekends.
'Entertainment farming'
Amid a shifting agricultural economy, many farmers here have moved to direct-to-market sales and what is called "entertainment farming," Owings and others said.
Sky Top was originally a commercial apple orchard, started by Butler's father in the late 1960s and wholesaling to large grocery store chains. Butler began moving into retail operations -- also known as "U-pick" -- in the early 1980s, particularly as growers from Washington state began using climate-controlled warehouses to supply grocery chains with apples year-round.
North Carolina's seasonal growers couldn't compete with that, so the choice for many farmers has been to become direct marketers, retailing the experience of fresh-off-the-tree apples as much as the apples themselves.
Sky Top is now 100-percent retail. Out on U.S. 64, Pat and Leslie Lancaster have operated Grandad's Apples 'n' Such as a retail and U-pick operation since converting a former cattle farm into a 30-acre apple orchard in the mid-1990s.
Visitors can pick by the pound or buy from the orchard's store, which also sells cider, some local crafts and apple turnovers on the weekends. The couple's young daughters and their black dog, Lucky, are fixtures in the store.
Some 15 varieties of apple ripen during the Henderson County season, which runs across 10 weekends from late August to late October. Galas, a good, crisp, eating variety ready to pick in August, have pushed the opening of apple season here about three weeks earlier.
While many apple-eaters know only the difference between red, green and yellow apples, Butler, the Lancasters and others cater to connoisseurs by growing lesser-known "heirloom" varieties like Arkansas Blacks and Cox Orange Pippins.
Offering tours
At Brown's Honey and Apple Farm, just off U.S. 64 on Sugarloaf Road, Brian and Nadine Brown have begun offering educational and historic tours to supplement their commercial apple and honey operation.
The farm has been in Brian Brown's mother's family since at least the 1840s, when a still-standing cabin was built on the site. Brian Brown and a son restored the cabin, and it is featured in tours of the property, which also exhibit the beekeeping operation and a team of Belgian horses, "Jeb Ewell Brown" and "Ace," who plow the fields.
At its peak, the farm had over 300 acres; it is down to 25.
"What we're trying to here is keep our farm financially viable," Brian Brown said. "All we want to do is hold onto what we've got until we die."