Nah you aren’t thinking about it the way he is. Giving you wood only slightly helps you, because of everything else it takes to get to the point where you can be competitive. Most people aren’t going to make the full journey, but helping people start always nourishes the soul if you let it. He’s probably not that concerned about how much advantage the wood gives you but is always willing to create a new friend with similar interests. If you’re successful, you’re going to probably be coming to him a lot for advice and commiseration. I have only gotten a few peaches from my yard but already love being here talking to real farmers.
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I’ve thought about setting up a PYO and may still do that in the near future. I contemplated what apples to grow and one day I talked to a local fruit and veggie market. He suggested I visit Walmart Grocery and other local groceries to see what they sale. He said, people only know what they see from local stores and introducing them to new varieties is hard to do.
I’m sure there are old timers that have eaten varieties they remember from years ago that Walmart doesn’t carry however, those are probably not going to be a big seller. Like selling local honey, without educating the people on what they are getting from Walmart and what pure local honey is… it’s hard to convince them on other brands.
I’m thinking as I do with honey… providing samples is always a good idea. My other thought as well as a few of you are having kids picking apples. I’ve seen what can happen at berry picking farms and it is a real concern.
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I can attest as well that the Upick orchards here that do the best business are those that have other things to do for the kids and even the adults. My favorite u-pick has a harvest festival type of celebration. Corn mazes, pumpkin patches, hay rides, and they even have the Amish come in and cook their incredible donuts. I’m not sure how the Amish do it but their donuts are like a meal in itself. Very large and heavy with incredible flavor. Super unhealthy though. Moderation. Sorry for going off topic.
There are many u-pick here and most are very nice. Seems like Fuji is very popular around here especially with halloween festivities going on.
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Anyone researching the PYO idea should visit as many PYO farms as possible, especially farms in their area. Also visit some farmer’s markets. Investigate what the farms grow and how they grow it. Also how they market their products and how they price it. Look for any area where you may have a competitive advantage. Is the farm clean and well kept? Are they friendly and customer focused. Are the prices reasonable and do they merchandise their products effectively? Do they have a good location? Do they use social media to their advantage?
Agri tourism is a good extension to PYO if you have the proper facilities and can deal with entertaining people rather than just selling them fruit. We don’t do it, but we might if we were younger and more energetic.
After trying many things on our PYO farm over 20 years we decided to just do the fun stuff with our 5 acres of fruit and flowers. We are only open 2 days a week for 5 hours in the morning. We don’t pick any blackberry or blueberry and sell them pre-picked because its too time consuming and no fun. We no longer sell at any farmers markets for the same reason. We no longer sell wholesale.
Since we down sized we can focus on the quality of what we grow and providing a positive experience for our PYO customers. This new plan for our retirement years has reduced our stress and the farm is now fun again.
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We have one pick your own orchard in the town next to mine. They have priced themselves into oblivion. They now have weddings, concerts, picnics, a restaurant etc. It is a venue. That is not the idea of pick your own to me. Also what has gone up are the prices of everything. An apple pie is $18.00 and up, a pint of homemade ice cream is 7 dollars. They have grass-fed organic steaks (beef, from a neighboring farm) and the price for two sirloin steaks is over $30.00. Too much crust on the pies, very little fruit is included, making them doughy and heavy. They have a veg. produce section of the exact veg’s you can buy in the supermarket, The PYO farm does not grow them (but they charge twice as much for the veg’s). As far as the apples go they have gala, jonagold, arkansas black, macs, honey crisp. Same old, same old. They have about thirty five peach trees. But basically 2-3 acres of apples on a total of 200 acres. No plums or pears. A few cherry trees I think; plenty of blueberry and raspberry bushes. The owner will not discuss growing with anyone (me included) who grow their own fruit. Not friendly.
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We have a very large (and successful) farm market in the area that has been around forever. They do have a lot of vegies they grow themselves but a large share of the stuff they sell is the exact same stuff from the same outlet as the stores around here carry but again at a higher price. And like the beef you mentioned , we have a shop that sells that kind of stuff and the free range chickens that they charge many times more for are not grown that much different than any normal chicken from the store is grown but they sell all the guy growing them can produce!
The people here are getting turned off by the prices. There are a few that will pay the price, but I have tried almost everything in the ‘store’ and its bland. After you grow your own fruit and veg’s you just cannot be fooled. Like buying a ‘grapple’.
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Around here, Worcester county, Tougas Farm,in Northborough may be the most well known. They have fruit year round starting from strawberries, blueberry, raspberry, peaches and apples , pumpkins, too. I don’t see any plums.
They also popular with local schools. Field trips are common. The kids love it. Great experience for kids themselves. They have support from UMass extension services.
I never find anyone knowledgeable to ask about fruit growing. They are always busy in the orchard somewhere during the growing season.
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Yes Tougas farm is very successful and they fully embrace tall spindle orchards. There is a learning curve as Blueberry has learned, but there is less waste with tall spindle because the trees are kept short and people can reach close to the top.
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Same here. A PYO -entertainment farm about an hour away gets about $5/pound u-pick black/blueberry and about $1.95/pound for apples and peaches. They also have cider for sale now. Not sure how that’s possible unless they froze some cider last year.
The place is very busy during apple season. I estimated about 500 cars on a Saturday. The quality is about average and the service was poor. I can not understand why they have so many customers willing to pay the high prices.
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MisterGuy - Nice perspective. Thanks.
Blueberry,
$1.95/pound doesn’t seem high to me. I charge $2/lb. for peaches. By the time I pay sales tax, it really nets to $1.80/lb. I round down to the nearest whole pound on the weight, so my customers do get a bit extra.
The stores here sell peaches for about a $1.50/lb. so I feel like we are competitive with store prices, with a much better quality product.
Sometimes stores sell peaches as a special for $1.25 per pound or even $1 per pound, but they limit quantities on those, so are really selling those as loss leaders to get people in their store.
$5/lb. for u-pick berries is pretty high.
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Here the apple price is about 0.3 to 0.4 dollars a pound. They sell as per half bushel bag you pick for 12 dollars, we weighted them and each bag is about 40 pounds. For you pick blueberries the price is 1.5 to 2 dollar per lb. cherry is from $2 to $2.75 depending on the amount you buy.
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$2 a pound for fresh picked tree ripe peaches at a farmer’s market is a good price for the grower and the consumer. The price at the local farmer’s market here is similar. The $1.95 I mentioned was a u pick price at the farm. Not sure if they offer a quantity discount, but that’s almost $100/bushel for u-pick. Also, they increased the price for blackberry this year to $6.95 u-pick. Imagine selling 5-10K pounds of blackberry at that price!
No sales tax in NC on farm grown produce, so we don’t have to deal with pennies, nickles or dimes.
We find it a lot easier to sell by volume so most of my prices are round numbers like $18 a bucket for black or blue. Most folks get close to 5 Qt in the bucket which makes the price around $2/pint or $2.50 lb.
Since we are only open for 5 hours, we try to process as many transactions as possible. Not having to deal with change makes it a lot easier and a lot faster.
In most cases the farmer sells his produce too cheap, so I can’t fault a smart grower for charging “what the market will bear”. I would be surprised if the $6.95 did not exceed that point causing customers to walk away.
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I’ve seen bags (10lbs) for as cheap as $3…but they are usually not the good varieties. A good price on in season Honeycrisp is $1/lb…and those are huge apples… You can buy “deer” apples at one local orchard for very little, but you need to sort the good stuff.
How do they deal with SWD?
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I’m not sure about the SWD, but I expect the normal cover spray program on the apples will take care of them.
Where are you located? Apple prices sound very reasonable for the consumer there
Here U-Pick is $2.50 per lb for all varieties except Honeycrisp which goes for $3.50.
A local CSA charges $70 for 3 lbs over 12 weeks. That works out to $1.95 per lb for your choice of probably 20 varieties over the season. The have planted most of the reliable Cox Orange Pippin offspring.
It seems to me that neither of these prices are terrible for high quality dessert apples. They aren’t conducive to processing quantities of apples.
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It seems that we get the lowest price for apple, and you can pick any apple except Honeycrisp. We always pick lots of Fuji for long winter storage.
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Those prices are for pre picked…2nds but they always look good to me (better then the garbage i grow!). Southwest WI…there are large orchards 5 mins away in La Crescent, MN and there are some big orchards around Galesville, WI (about 25 min) and there are several big operations south of here down around Gays Mills, WI (maybe 45 mins)…so I would guess that puts pressure on prices downward. Obviously the season is short and when you find good prices…buy buy buy. I went through probably 100 pounds of Honeycrisp last year before the snow even fell.
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Personally I would skip the u-pick part and sell fresh fruit, pies, ice cream and such from the orchard. Offer paid tractor driven tours of the operation as well. I visited such a place on the windward side of Oahu a few years back and it was a lot of fun and very educational.
Spending the day with loud kids and newbs thrashing around in an orchard doesn’t sound like fun to me. Besides, harvesting fruit is work. I’d rather buy some homemade peach ice cream (or such) and enjoy it under an old shade tree miles away from the city.
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