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. |
Our Response to Post Star Editor's Viewpoint
This letter is written in response to the recent articles regarding Washington County Tourism, specifically Ken Tingley's editorial dated Jan. 22, 2012.
Ken Tingley has defined tourism as "packing a car with a family of four and driving from 2-3 hours away" and then challenges his readers to come up with a single destination in Washington County that would attract such a family. He then states that there is nothing here that would attract the family. Nothing. I beg to differ.
When someone comes into our county and spends money here, that is "tourism". A Tourism Board's job is to draw people from other places into our county to spend money on our local businesses. When money is spent here, it generates tax revenue, contributes to the greater local economy, and helps keep local people working. So when a Town Supervisor states that "Washington County should not be in the business of tourism", he is expressing a common misunderstanding about the vital role tourism plays in our county's economic development, the opportunities available to local businesses and resulting employment opportunities.
Regardless of what Mr. Tingley thinks, tourism is happening in Washington County. While you won't see wildly commercial tourist traps, you will see beautiful bucolic scenery, quaint rural villages, covered bridges, and farms! Many of these farms are open to the public, through "organized tourism events", or for the seasonal harvest. I live and work on such a farm.
Our farm attracts 30,000 visitors within a 6 month period per year. Of that number, about 10% travel 30 minutes or less to get to our farm, 75% travel 45 minutes, and 15% travel more than 1 hour, many traveling 4-5 hours to come to a Washington County farm. Our farm is designed to welcome visitors, and to perform that task we must hire people, local people. In turn, we try to buy many goods and services for our business from other local businesses and farms. These visitors in turn need places to eat, buy gas, hotel rooms, other places to visit, etc.
Washington County farms and food producers are well known in the food savvy world outside of Washington County. Celebrity chefs, high end NYC food retailers, international authors, food-travel writers increasingly write about and include farm products from Washington County in their projects. This fall, our farm products were written about in national publications in four foriegn countries and six US national publications, resulting in contacts and visits to our farm. While other farms share this experience, it is sad that many in our own county do not recognize this potential. A trip to a trendy NYC eatery last winter was an interesting case in point. Of the 10 "local" producers listed on the menu, 6 were from Washington County!
The Gordon Ramsay television show being filmed at the Cambridge Hotel is featuring local (Washington County) farm products in the strategy to help the hotel grow it's business. Many on the crew spent the weekend traveling around to Washington County farms and raved about the experience! Kudos to Christine Hoffer and Washington County Tourism for making the connections between the production staff and the farms!
I think we could learn from Vermont to do more to promote our farms and encourage more agritourism. While events like The Cheese Tour, The Fiber Tour, NY Maple Producers Weekend, all help to bring tourism dollars to our county, I firmly believe there is more potential for growth in this sector.
The beauty of this kind of economic development is that it supports growing businesses and can still be relatively invisible and cost-effective by taking advantage of what we already have. The things we love about Washington County are also loved by people in other areas. Our landscape, villages, farms are our greatest assets. We can absolutely continue to thrive, but will do best if acknowledged and supported by public leadersand assisted by organizations like Washington County Tourism.
Susan Knapp
Hicks Orchard & Slyboro Ciderhouse
18 Hicks Road
Granville, NY 12832
(518) 642-1788
www.hicksorchard.com
www.slyboro.com
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Fresh Cider Available at these fine stores.....
You can pick up Hicks Orchard Fresh Apple Cider at the following Hannaford stores...
Broad Street, Glens Falls, NY
Quaker Road, Queensbury, NY
Burgoyne Ave., Hudson Falls, NY
Wieble Ave, Saratoga Springs, NY
Trieble Ave, Ballston Spa, NY
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