Prices have settled around $50. But after April’s devastating freeze, the real question facing apple pickers is no longer what a bag costs — it’s whether there are apples left to pick.
WARWICK, N.Y. — For families planning an apple-picking trip this weekend, the most important question may no longer be, “How much is a half-bushel?”
It may be considerably simpler:
Are there apples on the trees?
As September enters its final weekend, the consequences of April’s devastating freeze are becoming increasingly visible across Warwick, Orange County and the surrounding apple-growing region.
Earlier this month, the Warwick Valley Dispatch compared the actual cost of visiting area pick-your-own orchards and found that advertised apple prices told only part of the story. Admission charges, parking, mandatory purchases and activity fees could turn a seemingly inexpensive bag of apples into a substantially more expensive family outing.
But three weeks into the season, another distinction has emerged.
Around Warwick, prices have largely stabilized.
The apples haven’t.
Masker Orchards appears to understand the distinction. Its website currently greets visitors with an unusually direct message in capital letters:
“WE HAVE APPLES ON OUR TREES.”
It then lists eight varieties currently ripe for picking: Prime Red, McIntosh, McGowan, Cortland, Jonagold, Empire, Red Delicious and Sparta McIntosh.
In an ordinary year, telling customers that an apple orchard has apples on its trees would rank somewhere alongside a gas station advertising gasoline.
In 2026, it has become a competitive statement.
A Freeze That Rewrote the Season
The April freeze struck after unusually warm weather had pushed many Hudson Valley apple trees into vulnerable stages of development.
The results varied dramatically from farm to farm — and sometimes from one part of an orchard to another.
Pennings Orchard West is particularly candid about what happened.
The farm says the late frost left it with only “a fraction” of the apples it normally grows and describes the freeze as devastating.
Pennings remains open. Visitors can search the orchard for surviving fruit, and the farm’s pumpkin patch, corn maze, animals, play areas and food operations continue.
But Pennings also tells customers that only a limited number of apples remain on its trees. New York-grown apples have consequently been placed in bins, crates and boxes throughout the orchard so visitors can fill their bags.
Apple Dave’s has adapted in a similar fashion.
The Warwick orchard tells visitors that the April freeze affected growers from Virginia through Albany and says it will have New York apples available in bags and picking bins while emphasizing its other attractions, including wagon rides, music, food, trails and pumpkins.
Just outside Warwick, the effects are even more dramatic.
Soons Orchards in New Hampton isn’t calling 2026 ordinary apple picking at all.
It calls it “Apple Hunting.”
Soons says a freezing April night killed most of its apples after warm temperatures brought the trees into early bloom. Instead of ordinary weekend U-pick, the orchard has been opening for only a few limited, reservation-only dates.
Sept. 26 is one of them.
After that, Oct. 10 remains tentative and the remainder of October is still uncertain.
Across the state line in Sussex County, Windy Brow Farms says its 2026 crop was significantly damaged by fluctuating spring temperatures and the late freeze.
It has reduced U-pick to a single small bag size — a four-quart half-peck — and warns customers that picking may be available one weekend and unavailable the next.
The farm puts the situation plainly: it expects a significantly shortened season.
Why Did Some Orchards Fare Better?
There is no single answer.
Cold air drainage, elevation, slope, variety, stage of bloom, rootstock, location within an orchard and even small temperature differences can determine whether one tree survives a freeze while another suffers catastrophic damage.
But Warwick’s orchards are also remarkably different agricultural systems.
And Masker is an unusual one.
The farm encompasses more than 200 acres, much of it devoted to an old-style orchard of large, mature trees planted at spacings that would look almost extravagant to someone establishing a commercial apple orchard today.
That matters because apple farming has changed enormously.
Cornell University’s history of Hudson Valley fruit growing describes old seedling-rootstock orchards — including orchards 75 years old and older — at roughly 35 to 50 trees per acre.
Modern high-density orchards can approach 1,000 trees per acre, with some systems reaching 2,500.
A separate Cornell study of New York orchard design described approximately 41 trees per acre as representative of traditional New York apple production.
In other words, where an old orchard might spread several dozen large trees across an acre, a modern planting can put nearly a thousand smaller trees into roughly the same space.
Neither system is inherently “better.”
Modern high-density orchards were developed for good reasons. They can produce fruit sooner, simplify pruning and harvesting, improve labor efficiency and dramatically increase production per acre.
But old orchards possess something that can’t simply be ordered from a nursery.
Time.
Large root systems. Mature trunks. Broad canopies. Decades of adaptation to a particular slope, soil and microclimate.
And lots of space between trees.
Masker’s landscape reflects that earlier agricultural era. The orchard dates to 1913, and generations of trees have grown on the slopes of Warwick Mountain during more than a century of Hudson Valley winters, droughts, storms, late frosts and unpredictable springs.
That doesn’t make old trees freeze-proof.
Nothing does.
Masker suffered substantial damage in April as well.
But when a farm begins with an enormous footprint and thousands upon thousands of trees spread over varied terrain, even a severe percentage loss can leave something extremely important in September:
apples.
Seven Orchards, One Apple Town
Warwick remains one of the region’s remarkable apple destinations.
The Warwick Valley Apple Trail currently lists seven operations: Apple Dave’s Orchards, Apple Ridge Orchards, Masker Orchards, Ochs Orchard, Pennings Farm Cidery Orchard East, Pennings Orchard West and Warwick Valley Winery & Distillery.
They aren’t interchangeable.
Some emphasize entertainment. Others concentrate more heavily on agriculture. Some offer wineries, cideries, music, children’s activities or elaborate fall attractions.
And in 2026, each has been forced to respond differently to the same extraordinary weather event.
Ochs Orchard, for example, has abandoned the usual bag-pricing model this season and is selling all apples by weight.
Its current schedule charges $2.99 per pound for purchases up to 10 pounds, $2.49 from 10 to 20 pounds and $1.99 per pound above 20 pounds.
There is also a $5 entry fee for visitors over age five, although $3 of that admission is credited toward purchases.
That means a 22-pound apple purchase costs $43.78. For four admission-paying visitors, the gross total becomes $63.78, with $12 returned as purchase credits — an effective comparable cost of approximately $51.78, before the orchard’s 4% credit-card fee if applicable.
The $50 Neighborhood
What is striking is how little separates Warwick’s principal orchards on price.
A roughly half-bushel outing currently clusters around the same number:
Masker is $49.95 per car, including approximately 22 pounds of apples.
Pennings West is $50 per vehicle, with a half-bushel option.
Warwick Valley Winery lists a $40, 22-pound half-bushel, with a separate $10 seasonal vehicle admission bringing the basic visit to approximately $50.
Apple Ridge works out to approximately $52 for a family of four buying its $40 half-bushel after admission.
And a comparable 22-pound purchase at Ochs works out to roughly $51.78 for four admission-paying visitors after applying the purchase credits.
Within Warwick, then, the great apple-price war has effectively reached a cease-fire.
Call it fifty bucks.
What happens after you hand over the money is where the difference begins.
Apples Versus the Apple-Picking Experience
There is an important distinction here.
A farm supplementing its damaged crop with New York-grown apples isn’t doing anything improper. Quite the opposite.
The openness with which Pennings, Apple Dave’s, Soons and other farms have explained their losses deserves credit.
These are agricultural businesses confronting a weather disaster over which they had little control. Employees still need work. Farm buildings still require maintenance. Taxes, insurance and mortgages don’t disappear because the thermometer dropped below freezing one April night.
And customers still want their annual fall tradition.
So farms adapt.
Some emphasize pumpkins.
Some expand entertainment.
Some bring in New York apples.
Some ration access to surviving fruit.
Some shrink the bag.
And some are fortunate enough to still have enough fruit hanging from enough trees to operate something resembling a normal U-pick season.
That is where the 2026 comparison has changed.
At the beginning of September, consumers reasonably asked:
“Where can I get the best value?”
At the end of September, the better question may be:
“Where can my children actually pick apples?”
For families looking primarily for music, food, pumpkins and fall entertainment, there are plenty of good choices throughout Warwick.
For families whose idea of apple picking remains wonderfully literal — walking up to an apple tree, reaching into its branches, twisting off an apple and putting it into a bag — availability has become the commodity.
Sometimes Bigger Really Does Matter
Masker’s enormous scale can occasionally seem almost inefficient by modern agricultural standards.
Drive through the orchard and the trees don’t resemble the compact, ruler-straight walls of fruit increasingly common in contemporary commercial production.
They’re big.
They’re widely spaced.
Some are old.
Some are very old.
The roads wander around them.
Families park beside them.
Children picnic underneath them.
From a modern production spreadsheet, one might reasonably ask why anyone would design an orchard that way today.
They probably wouldn’t.
But nobody has to design Masker today.
It is already there.
More than a century of apple-growing has created an orchard whose sheer size, mature-tree population, varied elevations and sprawling footprint provide something particularly valuable in a disastrous crop year: redundancy.
A freeze can hurt thousands of trees without necessarily leaving an orchard empty.
That doesn’t mean every variety survived equally or every section escaped damage.
They didn’t.
It means that on the final weekend of September, after one of the most damaging spring freezes area growers have experienced in years, the message on Masker’s homepage isn’t complicated.
WE HAVE APPLES ON OUR TREES.
In 2025, that wouldn’t have qualified as news.
In 2026, it just might be the most important apple-picking advertisement in Warwick.
