We're Going In: Lost in an Apple Orchard With 300 Varieties

U-Pick, U-Lose Your Mind

Are you brave? Do you crave harvest and history? Take a bite out of Buffalo’s Big Apple.

It bites back — with 300 kinds of temptations!

This is LynOaken Farms, a century-old orchard in Lyndonville, N.Y. It was recommended by my friend Ryan — the apple of adventure never falls far from his tree.

At first, this apple orchard looks ordinary. You see a row of sunflowers. A tractor dozing in the sun.

Then you see a sign: “No Alcohol Beyond This Point.” A wise warning — and not just because there were signs for a winery. This place intoxicates on its own.

I was overwhelmed, and I did not even stop in the winery. There was just so much going on.

LynOaken Farms grows 300 different varieties of apples. Their names sound like something out of fairy tales. Forget Granny Smith and Honeycrisp — though of course they’re here. Try Sops of Wine, a medieval English beauty. Balleyfatten, from Ireland. Wolf River. Yellow Newton Pippin. Grimes Golden. Hubbardston Nonesuch. Esopus Spitzenburg. Westfield Seek-No-Further.

By the time you get to that last one, you would be half inclined to follow its advice. Such a confusing cornucopia!

But we’re brave. We crave history and harvest.

We’re going in.

Ignorant in the Orchard

You can get pointers in the little shop that serves as a visitors center. I ignored them. My sister Margie was visiting from New Jersey — lots of apples from there! — and she and my sister Katie and I visited the farm together. We aren’t together very often, and so I was distracted.

Hence, we went into the orchard ignorant. First we drove down a long — a very long — road that borders the apple trees. We wondered if that was allowed. Later, you guessed it, we learned it was not.

You do not take your car into the orchard. You travel on foot, like Johnny Appleseed, like Isaac Newton, like Bathsheba in the Bible.

I began carefully, reverently even, placing one or two in my bag. Being a romantic, I sought the old souls: German apples that might have been tasted by Mozart; British fruit beloved by Jane Austen or Queen Victoria; early American varieties that could have been grown by Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.

My sister Katie, a teacher, raised some core questions. Admiring Winter Pearmain from 1200s England, she wondered how apples had come down through history with such accuracy. In the Middle Ages, most folks did not know how to write. Were these apples chronicled by monasteries? Royal gardeners?

“Maybe they were mentioned in people’s wills,” she mused.

Imagine, Winter Pearmain or Sops of Wine or Wolf River in a will!

An Apple an Inch in Diameter

The trees grow small and close together, each with its own story. Some were already picked clean — a reminder that every variety ripens in its own time. I wandered, searching for the names that sang to me: the old-world apples, the storybook fruit.

What a resource this place is, for anyone interested in botany. How sweet for the pastry chef who wants to work with a particular kind of apple. You do not have to order it from halfway around the world, if that is even possible. You can likely find that apple right here.

The apples at LynOaken Farms are not cheap. A peck, which I went for — a few more than 20 apples — will run you $15. A half-peck is $8.

But what an experience! You pick one apple. Then another. Each is unique.

Lubsk Queen. a floral and honeyed Russian variety, was one of my top picks. Pitmaston Pineapple really did taste like pineapple.

Ashmead’s Kernel, from 1700s England, was a tiny golden marvel — an inch across, sweet and tart in perfect balance. Gilpin, a centuries-old American, was a pale, frosted green and red — the apple of my eye.

By then, my bag was heavy, with apples rolling around my cart. I wanted to keep track of what I’d found, so I invested $5 in an Apple Passport. It lists the apple varieties, each with a space where you can take notes.

Get your passport stamped enough times, and they reward you with free apples. I got it stamped, to commemorate my first visit.

I shall return — next week, next season, next century, who knows.

In apple terms, we are all very young.

LynOaken Farms in Lyndonville, N.Y., is a feast for the eyes as well as the taste buds. Watch the YouTube video at the top of this post to round out your experience!