Pumpkin patches, apple orchards, and corn mazes took a hit as rain put a damper on fall weekends

Every time pick-your-own farm managers checked the weekend forecast, it felt like déjà vu.

“Eight weeks is our fall season, and in each of those eight weeks there was some rain or precipitation, or call for dramatic rain that shifted,” said Rob Arcidiacono, director of operations at Shady Brook Farm in Yardley.

Once the rain cloud appeared on people’s weather apps, he knew it almost didn’t matter what ended up happening: The apple orchards, pumpkin patches, and corn mazes were going to be noticeably emptier.

“If there is a call for rain on Thursday, people aren’t coming out on Friday or Saturday, even if it clears up,” he said. “They’ve already made their plans.”

The popular Bucks County agritourist attraction is one of many farms and orchards across the Northeast that saw business take a hit this year due to wet — or forecasted-to-be-rainy — weekends. Between the weekend after Labor Day and the weekend before Halloween, only a handful of Saturdays and Sundays were dry in both the city and the suburbs.

In New Hope, Solebury Orchards refunded all their pick-your-own reservation holders due to bad weather on about five days this fall, said manager Nathaniel Woosley. Reservations are only $2.50 a person, but about 2,500 people can visit the orchard on a given weekend day, so the wash-outs did result in a financial hit.

“We want people to have a good experience,” he said. “In a way, it’s worth it to us to say, ‘Look, you can have your reservation fee back.’ ”

Some came back on sunnier days. And with such an abundant crop of apples this year, Solebury extended its pick-your-own season through the second weekend in November, hoping to make up for earlier losses.

For owners of seasonal attractions, this fall will go down as a dip on an otherwise upward trajectory for sales. Some pick-your-own farms, such as West Chester’s Highland Orchards, have been operating since the 1960s, but fall attractions have steadily increased in popularity each year for more than a decade, several area owners and managers said.

They did particularly booming business during the early part of the pandemic, when consumers had extra cash on hand and were hungry for outdoor activities where they could easily keep their distance from others.

“The last several years, I think we were spoiled,” said Keith Hodge, owner of Sunhigh Orchard in Parkesburg.

Located on the western edge of Chester County, Hodge’s pick-your-own farm is one of the area’s smaller operations. It is entirely family-run, with no employees aside from him and his wife, so it’s only open on Saturdays. But the business has grown steadily in recent years, he added, to the point that as many as 80 customers come out to pick apples and shop at the farm market on a beautiful fall day.

But this year, he said, their relatively good Saturday weather luck ran out.

“If I wanted to go back and figure out what the weather was on Saturdays over the last several weeks, one way to figure that out would be to look at my sales numbers,” said Hodge, who noted more than half of their annual sales usually come from pick-your-own. “We definitely saw dips in sales, because naturally when it’s rainy and miserable, we’re not going to have a lot of people coming.”

A few dedicated customers still showed up on wet days, he said. At Sunhigh, some customers come from nearby Amish communities, he said, and “have more of that tradition of preserving and kind of, as a family, making sauce and apple butter or apple cider.”

But the overwhelming majority of pick-your-own customers are there for the experience, local farm executives said, which can include a festive fall photo or two for their Instagram or Facebook. And photos in the apple orchard or pumpkin patch aren’t quite as attractive in the middle of a rainstorm.

“In the ‘60s, people were coming out to do this stuff to can or to freeze” apples for cooking, said Jeremy Zeager, farm manager at Highland Orchards. “Now we’re seeing that shift — people are coming for the experience. … They’re coming out because Grandma and Grandpa have the grandkids” and want to do something fun with them, or a friend group is looking for a fall activity.

Highland has established a particularly loyal following in recent years. Its popular apple cider doughnuts have landed on several “best of Philly” lists. They’ve added a corn maze and apple cannons on their 200 acres. During the height of the pandemic, they instituted a reservation system, Zeager said, but it became more trouble than it was worth for staff. Today, customers can just show up.

And, perhaps partly because of these factors, he said the rain didn’t affect their fall business too badly.

“If it rained on Saturday, it just made Sunday busier,” Zeager said. “We had a pretty favorable Eagles schedule, too. We do notice on a Sunday afternoon if there is a 1 o’clock game, we will see that in sales.”

“If it’s a nice beautiful day and there is no Eagles game and there are no other big events going on, it’s a full house here,” he added. “The rain probably kept some people away, but even on the rainy days, we did OK. We weren’t breaking records, but we did OK.”

The orchards’ management team has tossed around the idea of parlaying their fall success and becoming a Christmas tree farm in the holiday season. But by November, Zeager said, staff is “exhausted.”

Meanwhile at Shady Brook Farm this week, Arcidiacono and others were transforming the property from a fall escape to a holiday wonderland. A towering Christmas tree had been put up. Workers plugged in millions of lights for its annual holiday drive-through display. The holiday season begins there on Nov. 17.

“Holiday has become our biggest season” in terms of overall sales, he said, noting those festivities take place every day for almost two months. During that time, customers have off from work or school on several weekdays around Christmas and New Year’s, meaning the business is spread out, not just on weekends.

And if it rains or snows, he added, people don’t need to cancel their visit — the farm’s main holiday attraction can be enjoyed “in your car with a hot chocolate.”