Where To Go Apple Picking In New York

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 Masker Orchards in Warwick, located in Orange County near the New York-New Jersey state line. The orchard was recently named the best in New York by Reader’s Digest. Here’s what the the family magazine had to say:

"Combine your apple picking with cups of steaming spicy cider, brightly colored leaves and wagon rides under a blanket at Masker Orchards, which is nestled in the breathtaking Hudson Valley. And it doesn’t get more convenient than being able to drive your car right up to the trees. Not sure when the leaves will change color? Check out this fall foliage map to find your area."

SEE ALSO: Here Is The Best Pumpkin Patch In New York

If that doesn’t satisfy your taste buds — or, let’s be honest, the drive is too cumbersome — 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. The website lets you filter by state, and you can even enter a ZIP Code and specify how far you are willing to travel to get to an orchard.

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. Instead, 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.