If you like food, live in a walking city, feel personally punished by the illusion of good quality and diverse produce, despise Whole Foods and other overpriced Organic marts, and long for your childhood pick-n-patch, you’ve considered visiting a pick your own. OK. That was my own personal moment. More likely it sounds novel and fun.

What do you imagine? My visual goes something like this: sweeping hills, quaintly terraced vegetable patches, produce so beautiful, flavorful, and cheap you feel like you’re stealing the farmer’s children, and trees with sagging limbs under the weight of sweet, plump fruit. Growing up I picked a lot of fruit from our local farm in sub-rural Connecticut, and would leave red-faced from eating raspberries off the bush and dragging a bag full of apples. I decided to test the fruit and vegetable landscape in upstate New York. My choices came from this useful list of pick your owns.

While fruit is generally obvious (if it’s sweet and falls off the branch, eat it), vegetable picking requires some know-how and tools. I wondered if I’d know what a ripe eggplant looked like in a sea of ‘em. Scroll down to see my experience or visit the full Flickr set.

Picking Apples
When you’re expecting to drive 100 mile away, it’s not about local or saving money, per say, but about quality, value, and novelty. After sitting in some awful leaf-peeper traffic on 87, we finally arrived at 5 on Saturday at the Jenkins-Lueken apple orchard in New Paltz, an hour before the sun would dip behind the Shawangunk range overlooking us.

Knowing we were hitting the end of the season, we scoured for the last of the ripe Macs and Macoun. My apple tastes in order of enjoyment would be (most to least): McIntosh, Empire, Macoun, Granny Smith, Fujii, Gala, Jonagold, Honey Crisp, Lady, and both Goldens. So generally I am a tart, crisp, sweet girl, in that order.

Of all the crop we picked that weekend, the apples lived up to expectation. The Macs were so bloated with sugar it was amazing, but still brought their tartness. We also snuck in to try a peach and a plum. The trees, past season, had continued to produce the fruit but weren’t ripening them further, leaving them stringy and dry.

Each bag of apples, which you could fit about 25, ran you $18. Not super cheap. When you think about cost at a pick your own, you incur the labor, which is a lot of the cost. What you forget with apples is that generally, you pull on one with your hand and three others fall on your head. They litter the ground and rot, and the farmer isn’t able to collect. That’s of course in addition to the 5 or so we scarfed while “working.” So what the farmer is really giving you is novelty, freshness, and selection, for the price of about 72 cents per apple (plus gas and tolls).

The following morning we drove around early in the mist, taking in Ulster county, and partaking in some peeping.

Picking produce
We then headed on to Newburgh to Lawrence Farms Orchard, where they claimed to be picking all sorts of vegetables I didn’t think were in season anymore. The setting of the farm was overlooking a valley with a low cloud coverage floating by. We learned that 20k people (estimation based on the number of cars) the day previous. Uhm, ok, so what’s left? We were given a cart and a direction and went to find out.

Reaching the crossroads, we chose to head towards the peppers and eggplant. There they were, row after row of maybe 15 types of peppers and eggplants each. Some I knew, some I had no idea, and all I was unsure of if they were ripe. It was impossible to think that 20,000 people had come into the farm and done anything other than pull unripe produce from the ground and either place it in their baskets or toss it aside. Turning up with 10 beautiful peppers and a couple Indian eggplants felt like I’d won the Easter egg hunt.

After a survey of the Disney-size ground, we headed toward lettuce and cabbage, stopping only to admire the bounty of the nearby Japanese family. Yes, the Asians, myself half included, seemed to be the only ones coming out on top. The whites, specifically those being carted around in 4-wheel vehicles, definitely did not know their Indian from their Japanese eggplant, or even their Macoun from their Golden Delicious. At home in the Stop & Shop we have one “apple,” one “eggplant,” one “hot pepper” and one “bell pepper.”

Thankfully, Matt had come prepared with our camping knife, or we never would have wrestled this cabbage out of the ground. It was so tasty I ripped off pieces and ate them like jerky. Our total, minus the large handsome pumpkin we picked up to carve came out to $13.

In summary, our culture is becoming more disconnected with food and the land. Our produce is now being grown in massive farms studding the Midwest. As urban dwellers, we are a little more curious, and a little more in touch. So what does the upstate New York farmer do to attract a lot of city folk? He leaves his crop on the plant and welcomes all to come pick it off.

After our survey of the grounds we found that what they were picking was more a survey of the plants they had, not the ones where there was actually ripe crop growing. Those who live nearby and grew up in a culture more familiar with tending crops (who brought their own knives) will reap the benefits. Everyone else will come in their tanks, let their children run around and pull things off trees, and maybe get a doughnut before heading home. If you can stomach the theme park of it, there’s an educational experience waiting for you, and some good produce to boot. But you leave with the sinking understanding that the majority of visitors don’t consider this a trip to the grocery.