Apple Growers Tour in Ontario

I visited local apple orchards with the Ontario Apple Growers to learn about the fruit trees and how they get to our table.

Autumn is apple picking season in Ontario, when many farmers harvest the fruit and also when individuals can go to a farm to pick their own.

Ontario apple growers

I've been fortunate to go on 2 hosted apple tours with the Ontario Apple Growers, an organization representing growers in Ontario with 10+ acres of apple orchards, to learn about Ontario apples, what farmers & their teams do and where their product is sold. The first visit to Norfolk Country took us to a farm, a local restaurant and a processing facility.

In Ontario:

• There are approximately 230 apple growers.
• The apple growing areas in Ontario are concentrated around the Great Lakes (Lake Ontario, Lake Huron, Lake Erie) and Georgian Bay.
• The area that the apples are grown in makes a difference as the cold nights helps to give the apples colour.
• Apples are grown for the fresh market, for processing and for pick-your-own, which is a great fall family activity.
• 97% of the Canadian farms are family-owned.
• Ontario is the largest apple growing region in Canada.
• There's wide range of apple varieties grown in Ontario that are great for eating fresh or cooking/baking with. Red apples: Ambrosia, Cortland, Empire, Fuji, Gala, Honeycrisp, Idared, Jonagold, McIntosh, Northen Spy, Red Delicious, Red Prince, and Spartan. Green or golden apples: Crispin, Golden Delicious, and Russet. You'll notice that the most popular green apple, Granny Smith, isn't grown in Ontario because they need a longer period of hot weather to grow.

Wilmot Orchards

At Wilmot Orchards in Newcastle, Ontario, a family farm owned by Charles & Judy Stevens we met Courtney, their daughter and 6th generation farmer and Ian, the farm manager. With 135 acres of apple orchards and 22 acres of blueberries, they've been growing apples for 44 years!

There's certainly more science to growing than I realized and fully understand - planting with GPS so that the trees can be evenly spread apart and stay in a straight line, high-density planting and the equipment on the left that had something to do with weather conditions.

The apples that they grow on the orchard are destined for commercial use, and it was eye-opening to learn the strict regulations that they must adhere to. We walked around the orchard and trees but could absolutely not touch them, apples could only be handled by authorized individuals who knew and followed the guidelines, and Even the apples that fell to ground could not be handled and were left there.

Algoma Orchards

Our second stop of the day was Algoma Orchards, one of the largest apple growers in Ontario, to tour their apple packing facility. Started by the Gibson family and taken over by the Kemp family, they started growing apples in the mid-1800's. We were specifically there to learn about processing, storing and packing of the apples, but they also have 1,200 acres of orchards.

The packing facility, opened in 2009, is where apples are processed then sent to chain stores in Ontario and Quebec to be sold fresh. The apples go through these conveyors to be washed, sorted and graded before they are packed.

The facility packs around 450,000 pounds of apples per day, and process about 9 million litres of apple juice from the less than perfect apples. To reduce waste, some apples are used for fertilizer and leftover pulp after juicing is sold for animal feed.

Algoma Orchards is a fun and informative place to visit, but if you just want to get some fresh apples, juice, gifts or baked goods in the gourmet market, it's worth the visit.

How do we get apples all year around in grocery stores? After harvesting and processing, apples are stored in climate controlled rooms to keep them fresh for months at a time.

Apple recipes

• Easy Cardamom Spiced Apple Butter
• Cardamom Spiced Apple Butter
• Cardamom Apple Oatmeal Bars