APPLE PICKING AT PHILLIPS FARM

Each Monday Phillips Farms brings in a truckload of their freshly picked produce from rolling hills of Milford, New Jersey to showcase at Manhattan's Union Square Greenmarket. An impressive array of vegetables and fruits from leafy greens to apples, berries and pumpkins don their farm stand and attracts a large following of farmers market attendees.

This past weekend we had an opportunity to visit Phillips Farm in Northern New Jersey to learn more about their farming practices and pick a few apples from their orchard. In addition to being able to pick your own apples during the month of October, Phillips welcomes visitors to pick their own pumpkins. I was tempted to take this one home, but the nightmarish thought of hauling this humongous orange squash back to New York deterred me.

Over the summer, Phillips allows visitors to pick their own raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.

It's quite a delightful experience, especially for us kids who grew up in the city.

Since it is the peak of apple season, we walked through Phillips' expansive and marvelous apple orchard to survey the several varieties of apples growing.

It's such a wonderful experience to walk through these fields, taking in the picturesque, rustic country scenery and smelling the sweet fragrance of ripe apples in the air.

In addition to the hundreds of trees on the grounds, I was amazed by the proliferation of fruit on each and every apple tree. Many of the trees had long branches weighed down by the abundance of ready to pick fruit and it was not uncommon to see branches resting on the ground.

There were row after row of varying shades of green and red apples ready to pick including red delicious, golden delicious, fuji, gala, braeburn, honey crisp and macouns.

With so many apples weighing down the trees, several piles of loose apples surrounded the stumps, infusing into the air its own very sweet fragrance of fermenting fruit.