Linvilla Orchards - pick Summer apples now!

Sunday, August 12, 2007

Linvilla Orchards is one of the areas best known ‘pick your own’ farms, not far from Center City and only about 15-20 minutes from my house in Delaware County.  The 300 acre farm grows an impressive array of fruit - six varieties of strawberries, six varieties of raspberries, seven varieties of blueberries, blackberries, 34 varieties of peaches, 30 varieties of apples, five varieties of grapes, four varieties of pears, plus apricots, nectarines, and plums.  Oh, and vegetables - tomatoes, eggplant, corn, and peppers.  Oh, and you can pick your own pumpkins and holiday trees.  Let’s not forget the lake stocked with trout for fishing!  Truly, the place has everything...even hayrides to deliver you to the appropriate field!

Right now, apples and peaches are in excellent picking, as are the grapes and all the vegetables.  The Mister and I ran over there today to sample the Summer apples - Paula Red and Ginger Gold.

The Paula Red is the lovely little apple on the right in the photo.  It’s known as an excellent apple for making applesauce - it needs no sugar at all.  The apple is crisp with a slightly tart flavor - it’s just delicious!  Now is the perfect time to pick up some Paula Red.  These Macintosh-type apples seem to be at their peak right now.  I could not resist chowing down on one right there in the orchard!  A word of warning - don’t use this for pies.  When cooked, this apple gets extremely mushy...which is why it’s so excellent for applesauce! 

The Ginger Gold is a new-ish apple variety discovered in Virginia in 1969.  It is my absolute favorite Summer apple - it has the taste of a Fall apple.  It’s juicy and mildly tart, with the added benefit that it resists browning when cut.  You can do anything with it - pies, applesauce, salads, although it’s classified as a dessert apple.  I love to eat them plain and fresh, or sliced with blue cheese.

After apple picking, we meandered over to the peach grove.  The peaches are fantastic right now, although we found many more yellow peaches than white.  The blueberries were very picked out - we only managed to pick a handful of blueberries. 

The grapes were amazing and no one was picking them!  Early Concords are in season right now.  Concords are a slip-skin variety.  I’m still deciding what to do with these - I have about four cups of grapes or so, so if you have suggestions, please pass them on.  I’m thinking some sort of dessert.

The next event coming up at Linvilla is August 25 - the tomato festival! 

Linvilla Orchards
137 W. Knowlton Road
Media, PA 19063