This weekend we drove up to the North Georgia Mountains to go apple picking. This was our fourth year visiting Red Apple Barn Farm in Ellijay. In fact, we like that orchard so much, we went twice last year.
The farm has 19 varieties of apples, and picking season runs roughly from August 15th to October 30th. The varieties include Gala, Honeycrisp, Ludacrisp, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, September Wonder, Suncrisp, Jonagold, Mutzu, Crimson Crisp, Rome Beauty, Cameo, Pritchett Golden, Stayman Winesap, Granny Smith, Fuji, Pink Lady, Arkansas Black, and Yates. The Ludacrisp variety makes me giggle, because the rapper Ludacris lives in Atlanta.
We got up bright and early, actually before sunrise, so we could leave the house around 7 am, stop for breakfast along the way, and get to the farm at 9 am.
We stopped at Waffle House, a Georgia institution with locations all over the place. In fact, we passed 14 of them on our 1-hour and 20-minute drive to Ellijay. The restaurant’s tag line is “Good Food Fast,” and it serves breakfast all day. I’ll write a separate post about Waffle House at another time. We stopped at a Waffle House in Ellijay, and we were in and out of there in 30 minutes.
We arrived at Red Apple Barn at 9:08, so excited to be one of the first visitors to arrive. Turns out the farm’s store opens at 9 am but the u-pick activity doesn’t start until 10 am. So we decided to drive back into Ellijay and walk around the town square. And I’m glad we did! There was a little farmers market going on, so we bought some chicken eggs, duck eggs, and 4 containers of local honey.
Happy with our unexpected purchases, we went back to Red Apple Barn at 10 am. You pay for admission to the farm, and there’s a selection of bags and baskets that you can buy to fill with apples. Then you catch a tractor ride up to the top of the orchard.
At the top of the hill, the tractor drops you off, and there is a info stand where employees tell you what is ready to pick and where to find the different varieties around the property.
We spent a couple of hours walking around, filling our basket and bags. We would taste-test each variety before deciding if we wanted to pick that particular kind.
During our first trip to the farm in 2024, we discovered Mutzu apples which are huge, the size of softballs, and which are really crisp and delicious. Both last year and this year the Mutzu were disappointing, so we only brought home three of those.
We were also really looking forward to the Pink Ladies. We could fill a whole bag just with Pink Ladies, but again, we were disappointed this year. Those apples fell into two categories: 1) small, green and not ripe, 2) ripe but blighted with some sort of fungus or insect infestation and rotting on the tree. Boo. I was only able to pick four Pink Ladies.
We did find other varieties to fill our bags including Jonagold, September Wonder, Cameo, Enterprise, and others that I can’t remember.
In addition to apple picking, the farm has two cows and two calves that you can feed. They love to eat apples. There are also a couple of children’s play areas, because so many people come with their little kids, as well as a pumpkin patch, u-pick flowers, and various games like cornhole and horse shoes.
When we were done at the top of the hill, we decided to walk back down through the orchards instead of catching a lift on the tractor.
It was a long but productive day. In the end, we came home with 8 or 9 varieties of apples for a total of 30-35 pounds of fruit. This is not our record haul. Last year, since we made two trips north, we harvested 66 pounds of apples. And now the fun begins as we make dried apple rings, applesauce, baked apples, and rustic apple tart or just pick up an apple and enjoy it as a snack.
