Every September, I get the urge to find some cooler weather and get out in nature. One of our family traditions is picking apples in September/October and one of our favorite places to pick apples is Nivens Apple Farm.
Nivens Apple Farm 2005
Nivens Apple Farm 2010
(The second picture includes my niece and myself!)
Nivens is about an hour and a half from Columbia and just a short drive from the Greenville-Spartanburg area. We usually spend about 2 hours at the farm so the whole trip runs about 6 hours.
You can pick apples through Sept-Oct. If you want to know which apples are being picked which week, call ahead and ask. The weekend we visited, Red Delicious and Yellow Delicious were the currently ripe varieties of apple.
We bought a bushel of pick-your-own apples (you can buy already picked ones from the cooler... but why?) which got us two large plastic bags to fill. We bought tickets for the hayride to ride out to the apples, but if you're on a budget, skip the hayride. It's a loop around the farm with the final leg through a small forested area where "scenes" have been set up like Goldilocks and Santa Claus. It's ok but at $4 a head it can add to your costs.
While we waited for the hayride to start, we took in all the "stuff". Inside the main barn, you can watch bees at work in their glass home or baby chickens resting in their incubator. There's an elevated toy train that runs above the different retail items available for sale, like halloween decorations, local honey and apple cider. Don't forget to try your free sample of cider!
Outside you can see animals like a pig, goats, chickens and peacocks as well as a replica of an old timey kitchen. The play area includes a large teepee and some tires for bouncing. It's more fun than it sounds! They also have the now-ubiquitous mining sluice, which my kids always love. We bought a bag of "rough" and let them share it, sloshing it through the running water to see what they could find.
Nivens offers quite a few picnic tables so feel free to bring a picnic. You can add apples when you get there!
Other attractions include a corn maze (we didn't do that this time) and a pick-your-own pumpkin patch. But the real star is the apples!
Be sure to ask at the barn before you leave for an apple grabber- it's a wire basket on a stick that will help you to get the apples on the higher branches. They'll let you borrow one if you ask, or you might find someone heading out of the orchard who will pass theirs on to you.
Apple picking is pretty straightforward- just pull them off the trees. I think what makes this so fun for my kids is that most of the apples are on the higher branches and for them that means tree climbing! (You can sometimes find ladders out in the orchard- ask at the barn if you need one.) I tend to be the bag-holder, catching the apples the kids pass (or toss) down and it doesn't take long before we've gathered more apples than we can carry.
Some things to be aware of:
- The fallen, rotten apples lying around on the ground attract bugs, so wear long pants.
- Long pants also help with tree climibing.
- A bushel is a LOT of apples. More than you can probably eat and heavier than you'd imagine. A half bushel is probably plenty unless you plan to give some away or do canning.
- Watch out for overheating. The walk out to the orchard's not bad; the walk back to the car with a load of apples will seem much longer.
- Get some water at the barn before you leave and when you get back to stay hydrated.
A trip to Nivens will really get you in the mood for fall and is well worth the drive!
Prices for Fall 2010:
U-Pick Apples:
1 bushel- $15
1/2 bushel- $10
1 peck- $8
1/2 peck- $5
Hayrides- $4 per person (under 2 free)
Corn Maze- $8 per person or $24 for a family of 5
Mining-
Gemstones- SM $6
Gemstones- LG $8.50
Arrowheads- $6
Fossils- $9
