Delicious and juicy harvest: What to expect for the fall season at Apple Hill farms

Since Labor Day, all of Apple Hill’s farms have opened for the season. It’s set to be an especially tasty fall.

Not much infrastructure changes year-to-year at the El Dorado County network of farms, which has celebrated autumn harvests since 1964. The biggest differences are often to the apples themselves.

After early-season freezes destroyed nearly all of the 2022 crop, the pendulum swung back in 2023 with the strongest bumper crop Apple Hill Growers Association president and Delfino Farms owner Chris Delfino had ever seen in decades of farming. This year, a snowy winter coupled with amiable spring and summer weather will generate 60% to 70% of the 2023 output, Delfino said.

With the trees unburdened of 2023’s record amount of fruit, customers should expect juicier, more flavorful apples, Delfino said. Early Fuji, Gala, McIntosh, Honeycrisp, Golden Delicious and Empire apples are ready now, while Cripps Pink (also known as Pink Ladies, a trademarked name), Arkansas Blacks, Winesaps, Late Fujis and Granny Smiths will be ripe in about a month.

“When you have a cold winter and less apples, you’re going to get higher quality, naturally,” Delfino said. “All that water in there, that’s the natural gift God gives with those apples to produce that fiber and good juice in there, so you’re going to get a better-tasting apple.”

While October is generally regarded as Apple Hill prime time, Camino’s high temperature will drop from the high 70s to mid-60s this weekend, bringing the autumn feel for which people flock east. Visiting in September can also help people duck the crowds that have deluged Apple Hill on weekends in recent years, and make sure You-Pick farms still have plenty of fruit on their trees.

If you’d rather someone else pick (and perhaps process) your fruit, Apple Hill’s 50 farms have a bevy of offerings including caramel apples, apple cider doughnuts, hard cider, baked goods and wine. The season typically runs from early September through Veterans Day, with a dozen farms selling Christmas trees as an end-of-year addendum.

Crowds are more likely in the afternoon than the morning, so try to arrive around 10 or 10:30 a.m., Delfino said. His top piece of advice: Each farm is different than the last, so visit more than one.

What I’m Eating

Sacramento has a pair of restaurants dedicated to Guilin-style noodles: Top Choice Restaurant in Little Saigon, and Old Gui Lin in South Land Park. Also known as mifen, these rice noodles with meat and broth have been a breakfast staple in their namesake southern China city since 200 B.C., though they’re also eaten for lunch and dinner.

I recently opted for Old Gui Lin, where families slurped bowls of noodles at four long tables inside the shopping center full of Asian business along Freeport Boulevard. A menu with photos hangs in the window, advertising a range of noodle soups that, truthfully, aren’t all that different from one another.

You can get Guilin rice noodles with crispy, chicharrónes-like pork belly strips along with slices of pork and beef, pork ribs rice noodle soup with meat wrapped around circles of bone or slightly tough braised brisket dry tossed noodles (each $14). All come with the same slippery noodles and milky, tangy broth, though it comes as a pour-over version in the last of the three and is dyed auburn by chiles at the bottom of the bowl.

The soups’ greatest differences come at Old Gui Lin’s topping bar, a choose-your-own adventure replete with Zhenjiang vinegar, green onions, mustard greens and more. Add some funk to your bowl with pickled turnips, or some crunch with roasted peanuts.

The bar has chili oil, too, perfect for beef rolled pancakes ($10). Also known as Taiwanese beef rolls, the thick scallion pancakes are rubbed with hoisin sauce, filled with more scallions and slices of braised beef and wrapped into appetizing appetizers.

Old Gui Lin

Address: 5131 Freeport Blvd., Sacramento

Hours: 11 a.m.-8 p.m. seven days a week

Phone: 916-455-1687

Website: oldguilinca.com

Drinks: Boba tea bar, as well as sodas

Vegetarian options: Only appetizers such as pumpkin cakes, cold marinated seaweed and sweet-and-sour lotus root balls

Noise level: Pretty quiet

Outdoor seating: None

Openings & Closings

▪ Husick’s by Forester will open Friday at 36510 Riverview Drive in Clarksburg. Chef/owner Matt Brown (formerly of The Jungle Bird , The Golden Bear and Bodega Kitchen & Cocktails ) will whip up sandwiches, charcuterie and salads to go with Delta wines in the former Husick’s Taphouse space.

▪ Dao Distillery will open Sept. 21 at 11460 Sunrise Gold Circle, Suite C, where Gold River Distillery once was in Rancho Cordova, The Bee reported. Binh Dao’s distillery will be the second in the U.S. (and first on the West Coast) to specialize in ruou de, Vietnamese rice liquor with a sweet, smooth aftertaste.

▪ Seasons Kitchen & Bar will close Friday , less than a week after chef Katerina Balagian helped lead the Tower Bridge Dinner. A downtown Davis fixture at 102 F St. for more than 20 years, it underwent a menu transformation under Balagian, serving up Cali-Middle Eastern dishes in a high-end environment over the past year.