Hot burst blessed fall crops

Local farmers say weather this year favored fall harvests

Local farmers who manage a perennial juggling act of crops and weather say this year the weather favored fall harvests. Allen Grobe, owns Grobe’s Fruit Farm in Elyria. “I’m the fifth generation,” the 47-year-old Grobe said. “The farm has been here for 112 years. Apple harvest is underway. It is very good. The wet weather we had earlier in the year made great size in the apples, and the cool weather helped us.

“This last week with the hot weather hurt me,” he added. “It’s making the apples very sweet. It’s put a lot of sweetness in the apples. For now that’s not a problem, but it could affect storability down the road.”

Grobe said he’s finished picking gala, honeycrisp, Macintosh, Cortland, Jonathan, and empire apples, and started picking red and golden delicious apples.

His favorite variety is “whatever we’re harvesting.”

“Every apple has its season,” he noted. “Every apple is good to me. I like them all.”

But he’s very specific about his favorite apple dish.

“I like my mom’s homemade apple pie,” Grobe said. “I also like to eat the apples just the way they are.”

Cider is special this season, too, he said.

“The sweetness in the apples is reflecting in the apple cider,” Grobe said. “It’s equivalent to cider in mid-October.”

Jay Pickering, owner of Pickering Hill Farms in Avon, said his produce is wrapping up summer crops and heading into fall.

“It looks to me everything is in abundance,” Pickering said. “It looks to be a good year so far.”

Farming is a lot of work at this time of year, he said.

“The favorite part is seeing all the people and the kids who are so excited choosing their pumpkins and going through the corn maze,” Pickering said.

A 25-year tradition, the maze offers a challenge for youngsters in just over an acre of corn, he said.

The farm already harvested about 2,000 of the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 pumpkins this year. A few years back they grew a monster pumpkin which weighed in at 600 pounds, Pickering said. But not this year.

“We have a lot of big ones at 50 to 60 pounds that are beautiful,” he said.

Every year he looks forward to pumpkin pie and pumpkin rolls, which are available at the market.

“We’re ending the summer items but we still have plenty of tomatoes and peppers,” Pickering said. “We’re heading into fall.”

Carl Schlechter owns a 150-acre farm, and a lean-to market in Henrietta Township which is swinging into fall.

“So far we’ve only harvested fall decorative stuff,” Schlechter said. “We’ve done pumpkins and corn for corn stalk bundles. The sweet corn went really well. We’re at the end of that. Right now it’s pretty dry. I have one more planting that should make it, but it’s not filling the ears out.

“As an overall farmer, we like this little batch of hot dry weather,” Schlechter said. “We had some pumpkins that were not quite ripe. The hot weather is good for ripening them up. We have tons of pumpkins. But our pumpkin crop wasn’t the best this year due to the wet spring. It was stunted from too much rain. They’re running a little behind. We have squash, mums, sweet and hot peppers.

“We haven’t harvested grains yet,” he addedd. “Pretty much all the corn in the area did really well. We had all that rain; the corn sucked it up. The beans got set back. Overall from what I’ve been hearing, the yields are going to be good this year on soybeans and corn. Overall we’re pretty stoked about this weather.”

“The favorite part is seeing all the people and the kids who are so excited choosing their pumpkins and going through the corn maze.” — Jay Pickering, owner of Pickering Hill Farms in Avon