Harvest season has begun for apple orchards across Waterloo Region

With September well underway, that means apple orchards have entered into their busiest time of the year.

“Harvest has just started, it’s the beginning of September now, so we’re starting to get into the later season apples, and things look quite well,” said the owner of Maple Crisp Orchard in Elmira, Norman Horst.

Horst says that, even though his orchard doesn’t offer apple picking options like other some other orchards do around this time of year, it still is undoubtedly the busiest time for him and his crew. He says they anticipate local traffic to be fairly busy, even though the high temperatures throughout the season have meant a slightly earlier harvest than in previous years.

“We’re a little earlier than average. We’re picking, I would say, five to seven days earlier, maybe, than the average time.”

He says though that, even though the temperatures were higher this year overall, the weather was incredibly cooperative, adding that the heat was not necessarily a bad thing.

“It was very, very good growing weather,” said Horst. “We had lots of rain and we had heat. We had a nice amount of heat. So yeah, it was good growing season.”

Orchards do go through different cycles year to year, similarly to the growth of other fruits and crops. Even though the weather and temperatures were very benficial for this year’s harvest, Horst says he is anticpating a decline in this year’s average yield.

“Each orchard will be a little bit different, but mine, compared to last year, will definitely be harvesting less apples,” said Horst. “Last year was what we’d call a ‘bumper crop’ for my orchard, and so this year is going to be more average.”

A ‘bumper crop’ is when a harvest is unusually abundant, meaning that there was an influx of apples for his farm the previous year. Horst knew though that it would decline this year as a result. That being said, he sys he still anticipates plenty of apples and plenty of business during this year’s harvest.

“We do expect more people than normal. The next two months, September and October, definitely our busiest time of year. So far, what we’ve noticed is people are coming out to buy apples, so that’s a good thing.”