Freehold Orchard Named Among Best In America

October is special. Leaves show off before they drop, taking on brilliant red, orange and yellow hues. Pumpkins become relevant again. Young kids become their favorite superheroes and villains for Halloween. But it’s also that rare time of year when apples are ripe for the picking, and when people decide they’d rather pick their own than buy them from the grocery store.

If you’re one of those people, consider heading to Battleview Orchards in Freehold. The orchard was recently named among the best in New Jersey by Reader’s Digest. Here’s what the the family magazine had to say:

"This New Jersey orchard is owned and run by the Applegate family, and they definitely know apples. The 120-acre farm produces 14 different varieties of crunchy apples alongside juicy peaches and giant pumpkins. Visit on the weekend and you can enjoy a warm apple cider donut before taking a hayride across the property."

If that doesn’t satisfy your taste buds, you might head to one of the following orchards, compiled by OrangePippin.com, a resource website founded by apple enthusiasts and dedicated to the fruit.

• Crest Fruit Farm, 82 Thompsons Grove Road, Englishtown; 732-462-5669
• Terhune Orchards, 330 Cold Soil Road, Princeton; 609-924-2310
• Lee Turkey Farm, Hickory Corner Road, Hightstown; 609-448-0629

Apple picking has become as American as, well, apple pie. In America, the activity dates to the Jamestown colony in the early 1600s. Settlers brought over seeds from Europe and began harvesting them. According to the History Channel, apples use to be much more bitter than the sweet ones you taste today. Back then, they were mostly used to make apple cider, a popular drink in England.

There are 2,500 varieties of apples grown in the U.S., but only the crabapple is actually native to North America. Most apples are still picked by hand in the fall, and they’re pretty healthy, too. Apples have a great source of fiber and contain no fat, sodium or cholesterol.

If you’re looking to score some apples, here are some tips from pickyourown.org on how to find the best.

• Apples will stop ripening once they’re picked, and the apples outside the tree will ripen first.
• Apples on the sunny side, usually the southern side, ripen first.
• Look at the color. “Depending on the variety, apples may be yellow, red, green or combinations of these colors at harvest,” the site said. “When the green has almost completely given way to yellow, a yellow variety is mature. With red blush or striped apples, the area where there is no red color usually changes from green to yellowish at maturity. Some of the newer red strains are challenging, because they are red all over long before they are sweet and mature. In these, the change in the color of the flesh goes from greenish to white when they are ripe. Red Delicious spur-types apples are odd in that the greenish tint may take months in storage to disappear, but they are fine to eat before that!”
• Don’t pull the apple straight away from the tree. Insead, roll the fruit upward off the branch and twist it a little bit.
• Don’t shake the trees or branches.
• If apples touch the ground, that’s fine. Just wash them before you eat them.

Patch national reporter Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Rick Uldricks/Patch