Local Flavor: Wilkens Farm Dishes Out an Old-Fashioned Piece of the Heartland

The crisp edge of fall can be felt in the cold dewy grass in the morning. Jersey tomatoes are disappearing from grocery bins, leaves are starting to turn and long, lazy dinners in the waning rays of the sun have finally set.

Apple season is here. Are you ready to bite? Sometimes, getting a real dose of local flavor is impossible without getting a bit dirty. At the 180-acre in Yorktown, the fruit and old-fashioned fun is ripe for the picking. 

“We grow 40 different varieties,” Randy Pratt said. “If you’re looking for a particular type, call before coming down because they all ripen at different times. While there’s always at least one ready to be picked during apple season, it may not be the Northern Spy or the Baldwin pickers have their heart set on. And we don’t want anyone to be disappointed.”

Disappointed? New Yorkers can be a tough crowd, but it’s hard to imagine anyone strolling around feeling underwhelmed or chastened at the sprawling family farm (one of the last in the district), which houses orchards, a traditional farmhouse, a market bursting with delicious, homemade fruit pies, donuts and other baked goods (plus local honey!) and a bustling atmosphere of gee-shucks convivial commerce that harks back to an era when it was the norm, not the exception, for families to pick, cook and eat their food together.

There’s an apple for everyone: In addition to Baldwin and Northern Spy, Wilkens offers Winesap, Gala, Honey Crisp, Red Delicious, Cortland and dozens of other heritage breeds and old favorites.

“Cortlands are multipurpose,” Pratt said. “McIntoshes make the best sauces, and we’ve found that Baldwins make the best pies. But they’re all good.”

Pratt should know. He’s been running the farm for 21 years, after spending 10 years as an admiralty lawyer in Manhattan.

“My father-in-law was sick, so I started helping out,” Pratt said. John Wilkens eventually passed away, but his wife, Barbara, is still going strong and she’s involved in much of the day-to-day management of the farm, as is Randy’s wife, also named Barbara. (The Pratts met at undergraduate school at Cornell). The lawyer-turned-farmer said that the career change has been dramatic, but interesting.

“Everyone lends a hand during fruit harvest and the Christmas tree season,” Pratt said. “There’s always something to do.”

Indeed. After three generations in the same family, the Wilkens Farm is a success story in the face of enormous odds. It has emerged in one healthy, vibrant piece from not only its patriarch’s illness and death, but from land poachers and the unimaginable grind and pressure of over-development and large corporate agricultural outfits. (Westchester even tried to turn into a golf course at one particularly low point.)

Since 1916, the farm has grown peaches in the summer, apples in the early fall, pumpkins in the mid-late fall and Christmas trees in the winter. Visitors harvest, carry and pay for what they like, giving our increasingly urbane and urban children and lives a short bucolic, educational break.

The Wilkens had six children, all of whom are involved during the busy seasons, and the Pratts have three adult children, all of whom also lend a hand when they can. At 21, 24 and 26, Pratt said it’s still too early to know who, if any of them, will one day step in and take over, though it’s clear that farm will stay in family hands somehow.

Under Pratt’s guidance, the farm has not only stayed above water, it’s flourished.

“In recent years, we’ve added apple varieties,” Pratt said. “We’ve also added pumpkins, peaches and different types of Christmas trees. Around Columbus Day, the orchards will be jammed with pickers.”

In addition to the taste of true-blue Westchester terroir, farm to table eating, wagon rides and the ability to give children a look at genuine, rural America, visitors get an eyeful that rivals anything in the county. The farm, located on one of the highest plateaus in Yorktown, offers a sprawling view from Bear Mountain Bridge clear out to Connecticut.

Picking hours are every day from 10 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Apples cost $17 for a peck and $27 for a bushel. The farm is located at 1335 White Hill Road in Yorktown Heights. Call 914-245-5111 for information on what's being picked.