This post is brought to you by Christy’s mother, Patsy: the person who plans, shops, picks, cleans, cooks, and/or bakes for every meal whenever the Jones kids visit their childhood home near Rochester, New York.

Northern New York State, within a few miles of Lake Ontario, is prime orchard real estate. The “lake effect” of moderating temperatures and decent rainfall coddle the early spring buds of apricots and nectarines, although these are no competition for the mainstay crops of apples, peaches, and cherries. Add fields of strawberries, hillsides of bush blueberries, and rows of brambly raspberries and blackberries, and you have everything you need to know about Green Acres.

If you’ve watched television sit-coms from the late 60’s you may recall the “original” Green Acres with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor taking refuge from the high life in NYC at a rundown farm, with much comical confusion and satire. But this 21st century orchard provides all of the quaintness with little of the hard work.

Tuesday morning at 8:00 is the time to arrive; the orchard is closed on Mondays so everything has soaked up an extra day of sunshine. On a single morning in August, with a 4-quart basket belted on your waist, you can pick peaches, nectarines, apricots, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, stowing each in the trunk of the car for later weighing and paying.

What is it about the act of picking-your-own that captivates some of us? It’s not cheap, and the temptation to pick more than you could ever eat is powerful. Maybe it’s the realization that the peaches at our best grocery stores have had a long truck ride from a distant state. Or is it the suspicion that the raspberries that hold their shape so long in the little plastic boxes at the store must be a mutant strain?

Even a person who lives in the country has to experience joy at beholding hundreds of blushing apricots on one little tree. Maybe it’s the mental stimulation required to maintain a state of alertness to the ten different stages of ripeness of the blueberries in one cluster.

Many visitors to the patch will claim to be making pies and jam, but can anything top the taste of each of these fruits eaten fresh?

(Oh, wait…maybe homemade blackberry-apricot crisp?)