Apple-Picking Is Fun! | The New Yorker

Hi, everyone, and thank you all so much for coming out to our apple orchard today! We are thrilled that you’ve decided to spend your Saturday with us, apple-picking—a fall activity that is definitely fun for reasons we’ve never been able to articulate clearly.

And, hey, how about this weather, right? It really is the perfect day to spend outside at the farm—an unpleasant and sweltering eighty-seven degrees in the sun, but an unpleasant and frigid twenty-one degrees in the shade, insuring that, no matter what you wore, it was wrong! There’s no better way to embrace autumn than by picking apples in temperatures that remind you that the genuinely comfortable part of the season now lasts for only about three hours, all of which you will spend inside working.

Oh, F.Y.I., there are a lot of bees here. Like, a lot. Bees really like apples, too, so they’re basically everywhere, especially in places where you won’t be able to see them until they’ve already stung you. So, yeah, just a heads-up.

Now, for those of you with children, please let us know whether they’re too young to be here or too old to be here. If they’re too young, we’ll direct you to the area where they can stumble around aimlessly until they hurt themselves trying to reach an apple and start sobbing uncontrollably, forcing you to cut the trip short. If they’re too old, we recommend just letting them hang out by the petting zoo, where they can post TikToks about how apple-picking is stupid and they hate you until you give up and go home. If your child is the perfect age to be here, please contact your local theoretical physicist, as you have clearly discovered a new age that it is possible for a child to be.

For those of you without children, why are you here? Like, seriously, why? We’re still happy to take your money. We’re just confused.

Anyway, enough about all that. It’s time to get to the good stuff—the apples! We’ve got every kind you could want here: red, green, reddish-green, greenish-red, unappealing yellow, really hard ones that your kid who is too old to be here can throw at your kid who is too young to be here, and brown. So, so many brown ones. Please pick a lot of those. They deserve homes, too. And, if you’re having trouble finding any good apples on the trees, we’ve conveniently picked a lot of them for you already and tossed them into big, crumbling cardboard boxes from 1973 that are located throughout the farm. Feel free to rifle through them. It will be just as thrilling as going to the supermarket, only you have a greater chance of getting bitten by something and also you had to pay twenty-five dollars to do it.

Before you head home, make sure to check out our country store, where you can buy all sorts of things that we made with our apples plus lots and lots of butter and sugar. You definitely can’t leave without trying our world-famous apple-cider doughnuts, which have been ranked best in the state for six years in a row! We made four of them today, and they sold out fifteen minutes after we opened. Sorry.

So, have a great time today, and we can’t wait to see you again when it’s time to pick your Halloween pumpkins, another fall activity that is definitely fun for reasons we’ve never been able to articulate clearly. Enjoy, and make sure to collect your apples as quickly as you can! The bees already know you’re here, and they’re not happy about it. ♦