This farm feels like a park. Picnic tables are placed in the orchards, and a carpet of green grass is perfect for napping blankets. The nature trail with plant identification provides an educational aside. Also, there is a large gift store and a pie shop that bakes the biggest variety of apple pies in the area. Most apple trees are too small to bear climbing, but most fruit can be reached on tiptoes or with a picking stick.
Farms give pickers a bag or a bucket and point the way to the trees in season.
Pickers weigh their lot and pay between 35 to 50 cents a pound. Larsen's Apples Larsen's farm is one of the oldest in Apple Hill. And it has a pioneer museum to prove it. Photographs of Nels Larsen, a Norwegian who established the Camino homestead in 1860, hangs beside pictures of other ancestors, and there are period-decorated rooms that stretch from the 19th century to modern day. Old farm equipment, tools, even the family's original, one-room cabin are on display.