Welcome to Hicks Orchard! New York's Oldest U-Pick Orchard and a Family Tradition since 1905.
Located in Middle Granville, New York, in the Lower Adirondack Region on the New York/Vermont border, Hicks Orchard is a great place to spend a lazy summer day picking cherries, blueberries or raspberries or an entire day during the fall apple harvest enjoying the best that eastern New York has to offer.
Whether you're picking your own fruit on our farm, tempting your taste buds with hot cider donuts, watching apple cider being pressed in our cider mill, visiting the barnyard animals, getting lost in the corn maze or making a scarecrow to take home, Hicks Orchard has something for everyone. Use the navigation keys above to learn more about visiting our farm. |
SLYBORO CIDERS AVAILABLE AT THESE LOCATIONS...
We are slowly but surely expanding the availability of our award winning ciders. You can now find Slyboro Ciders at the following locations..
NEW YORK WINE CORK
217 Glen St.
Glens Falls, NY
(518) 743-WINE
www.nywinecork.com
THE LIQUOR STOP
Pricechopper Plaza
Granville, NY
(518) 642-9262
HARMONY HOUSE MARKETPLACE
184-190 Remsen St.
Cohoes, NY
(518) 238-2232
www.harmonyhousemarketplace.com
Troy Farmers Market
444 River Street
Troy, NY 12180
Saturdays 9am -1pm
www.troymarket.org |
THE ORCHARD BLOG!!
May 21, 2008
The honeybees are now gone and the petals are starting to fall (and this stage is actually called "petalfall"). It's a bittersweet time in the orchard. The excitement of the bees working in the orchard and the beauty of the glow from millions of blossoms is gone for another year. Now the trees are in the "growing season", and the flowers that were successfully pollinated by honeybees are exposed now as swelling fruitlets.
mAY 8, 2008
The Honeybees are here!!! Mr. Myers of Myers Apiaries brought our hives and strategically placed them through the orchard to let the bees have a go at what they do best. The apple trees are just starting to pop (blossom) and the cherries and pears are finishing the bloom and are starting the phase known as petal fall. The honeybees are the most efficient pollinators. If conditions are right (no wind or rain and warm) they can pollinate our entire orchard in a day. That's millions of blossoms! Honeybees are an integral part of our farm.
May 1st, 2008
We've had two successive nights of frost and below freezing temperatures. This will hurt this year's cherry crop, as the trees were at about 50% bloom. The flowers can get destroyed with a frost or freeze and...no flowers, no fruit. So we will be watching to see how many more blossoms are due to come out, and we can predict what percentage of a crop we might get this summer.
The apple trees have not blossomed yet, so we are okay in that department (so far)!
April 1, 2008
Out like a......wet lamb! The race to finish pruning before blossom is on. All this rain is slowing down our efforts to finish the winter's job of pruning the trees. We would like the trees to take their time waking up, we're never in a rush for spring. We've not only got the job of pruning the trees, but also chopping and mulching all the suckers and branches dropped in the rows from the winter's pruning efforts. Now that the days are longer, the trees will soon be able to respond to warmer days. For us to finish our winter work, we would like cooler weather for the month of April!!
March 1st 2008 In like a lion....
Another snow storm adds more snow on the branches of the trees making it difficult for the pruning crew to clearly see the structure of the trees and make their cuts. Snow depth makes moving around the trees difficult also. But we continue as spring is coming and the bulk of pruning must be done before "Blossom".
12/27/07 Things are quiet in a snow covered orchard. Just the sound of pruning saws at work. Now is the time to prune and get the trees ready for next spring. We need to do this work while the trees have gone into a dormant phase. This work will take us into the spring when the cycle starts all over again.
10/12/07 Whew! We've gone through the bulk of the fall harvest. A few varieties of apples were "picked out" sooner than we would have expected. Next up are the Mutsus, which are the size of small pumpkins. The Northern Spys are also very large this year, despite the lack of rainfall this summer. We are not at "peak" foliage yet, but some colors are peeking out around us.
9/3/07 Apples are popping out in color all over the orchard and branches are bending toward the earth with the weight of apples. Soon the harvest will begin.
8/20/07 Blueberries are now picked out for this year. Fall Raspberries still have a way to go before they "come on". The last couple of cold nights will help put a little color on the apples. Apples are still "on schedule" , meaning that the Paula Reds will be in the barn by Sept. 1st and the we'll start picking the Macs Sept. 15th!
8/13/07 Driving around the orchard we can now "see" the crop on the trees. Apples are starting to color up and put size on. We still have about a month before we pick the macs. We've not had a lot of rain this summer, which means that the apples will be sweeter than last year. Fall raspberries are coming along nicely and we're starting to get a few ripe berries already. Blueberries are almost gone. That always signals the change in summer for us. Soon our long lazy summer days at the farm will become very busy and focused on attending to the delivery of a massive crop of apples.
7/20/07 The first summer apple is ready to be picked today, if you have a chance you should try making a pie with Lodi apples, especially and apple-blueberry pie! A great taste of summer. Things are still in the "mowing and growing" stage. Apples are continuing to put size on with all the rain we've been getting and are slowly starting to get color. Doesn't look like there will be any plums this year to speak of, due to a spring frost that killed the plum blossoms. Pears look good though. It's slow growing time in the orchard while the barnyard is busy with preparations for the fall.
6/26/07 Now that the spring blossom has come and gone, and with "thinning" out of the way, we go into an auto-pilot mode. I would call this time "mowing and growing". Jay is out on the tractor every day mowing the orchard rows, trying to keep the grass and weeds back while the apples and other fruit just keep growing. We are also constantly out "monitoring" the pests in the orchard as well as keeping a check on any disease development. We are also trying to get ready for summer fruit picking, such as cherries, blueberries and raspberries.
5/31/07 We have now passed through the stage known as "Petal Fall" . The beehives are gone and onto their next job. The fruitlets that have been successfully pollinated are starting to swell. I'll go out to take photos of these mini apples and post them asap. This is the perfect time to see both the new apple and the old flower all at once. So the stage we're at now is called "Thinning". This is where my husband the farmer looks at the apples that have "set", and has to look at 7 different variables to determine how many fruitlets we have to knock off the trees in order to have the best possible crop. This is where the real gambling takes place.
One of the interesting occurances in the orchard is the "June Drop". It's when the apple trees naturally abort any non-viable fruitlets. The stems will start to wither and dry up, allowing the unwanted fruit to drop off. This is yet another factor we have to add into our thinning calculations.
5/23/07 We finally have warm sunny days, with little wind. Perfect conditions for the honeybees to pollinate the apple blossoms. The Macs have already passed peak blossom and are now at "petal fall", which is a beautiful sight to witness. A gust of wind will blow through the tree and thousands of white petals float through the air. My 5 year old daughter saw this and exclaimed "Fairy wings"!
The Northern Spy trees are now in full bloom. We stood before an ancient Spy tree yesterday and heard the buzzing of a thousand bees before we noticed them all over the tree. The tree seemed to be vibrating. It is said that with the right weather conditions (no rain, no wind, and warm) our honeybees can pollinate the ENTIRE orchard in one afternoon!
5/21/07 Jay, a member of our farm staff, told us about a spectacular experience he had while mowing the dandelions between the orchard rows (we don't want to distract the honeybees from their main focus out there)...he was driving the tractor down through the Honeycrisp trees in full bloom and was constantly dodging hummingbirds. They were darting madly through the blossoms. He witnessed 6 hummingbirds in one small apple tree. He said he saw as much as a dozen at one time. Of course he had forgotten his camera that day, but now carries it with him. So besides honeybees, bumblebees, and other insects as pollinators, this year we can call Hummingbirds our farm helpers too!
5/7/07
As of today, the trees are developing 10 days later than last year. This could push the beginning of cherry season into July. |
