Apples

Today we rode through Wayne county. New York is the second biggest apple producing state in the country behind Washington, and Wayne county is the biggest apple producing county in NY. We saw plenty of evidence of that today.

The trees are planted in dense nursary rows. Later they will be transplanted to fields.

Most of the modern trees are dwarf or semidwarf varieties that never get much higher than a person can reach. This makes them easy to harvest.

The scale of modern apple orchards is huge. They certainly don't look like family farms. The harvest doesn't start until September, so we didn't see how they are picked. By hand? By machines that shake them down? While taking a break for lunch, we met a local biker named Jim out for a Sunday ride. Jim is also an apple farmer and told us that apples are still harvested by hand. Most of those hands are immigrant hands.

These crates will be filled with apples in a month.

There are still some old school non-dwarf trees, but many look like they are being abandoned.

We passed through Pultneyville, scene of a skirmish during the war of 1812. A British warship raised Oswego, then sailed down to Pultneyville. The residents made a deal with the British - they would turn over the supplies in the Pultneyville warehouse in exchange for the British sparing the town.

The British agreed to the deal and loaded the supplies in their ship. But then they began to plunder houses on Washington Street. Americans started firing on the British ships, which returned fire with a swivel gun before departing.

Pultneyville, scene of a modest skirmish in 1814.

After leaving Wayne county, we rode to Irondequoit, just north of Rochester. A walk around Irondequoit convinced us that there must be a large Ukrainian population in town.

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