5 Great Places for the Best Cherry Picking VA

Critzer Family Farm

9388 Critzer Shop Road Afton, VA 22920

Critzer Family Farm is the ideal destination for an outdoor day with family and friends. Connect with nature, get some fresh air in your lungs and tire out the little ones!

“Critzer Family Farm is a friendly, down-home setting perfect for you and your family to enjoy. Our goal is to provide you with the freshest, best-tasting and healthiest produce that you can find.  We use environmentally-friendly methods and we have a 5-generation commitment to leave the land and community better than we found it. Our farm offers kids a place where they can learn about hard work and integrity, and experience a bit of farm life, showing them where their food comes from. We are open to the public from April to October. Make plans to visit, we’d love to see you!”

 

 

Mackintosh Fruit Farm

1608 Russell Rd, Berryville, VA

Mackintosh Fruit Farm is located in the very aptly named and beautiful town of Berryville , Mackintosh. Mackintosh Fruit Farm is a family-owned PYO farm nestled in the beautiful Northern Shenandoah Valley in Clarke County, VA. They produce is first-rate fruit and the pick-your-own crops are well known as some of the best throughout the area. Their assortment of fruit selections allows their PYO customers early, mid, and late-season varieties. Strawberry picking season usually begins in May. 

“Our goal for Mackintosh Fruit Farm was to find fruit varieties that have amazing flavor and texture and grow them on dwarf trees that can be picked easily from the ground. We combined our favorite varieties with size controlling rootstocks. This is done by grafting selected varieties on a root system that will allow us to plant a tree that is smaller when mature, easier to pick, and is known for producing larger tastier fruit.”

Apples, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, cherries, blackberries, local honey and pumpkins available when in season.

 

Hollin Farms

1524 Snowden Road, Delaplane, VA 20144

Beautifully situated on the Blue Ridge Mountains is Hollin Farm, which has been in the same family for four generations.

In May and June we pick strawberries, late June and early July raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, sour cherries, spring and summer vegetables.  July and August there are berries, peaches, Japanese plums, Asian pears, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet corn, peppers, beans, okra, eggplant, squash, dig-your-own potatoes, cut flowers, and other summer vegetables.  September and October see Apples and Pumpkins.

 

 

Albemarle Cider Works & Vintage Virginia Apples

2545 Rural Ridge Ln, North Garden, VA 22959

At Albemarle Cider Works and Vintage Virginia Apples, you won’t find your average pick-your-own orchard. They have a fascinating philosophy and vision for their orchard business, which is explained in detail here.

“Vintage Virginia Apples was founded in 2000 by the Shelton family. In our orchard, we grow a variety of tree fruits that are becoming increasingly rare. Many of these are older varieties that have fallen into obscurity or just do not fit the needs of today’s commercial marketing and distribution systems. We began by planting a small array of interesting apples, which has grown now to more than 200 different cultivars, both heirloom and more recent varieties. We have also experimented with growing a variety of other fruits including peaches, pears and plums. Our nursery has grown from this love of vintage varieties, which we aim to share with like-minded orchardists by offering over 100 varieties of fruit trees from our collection through our fall/winter catalog which we post online each fall.  Many of these varieties are virtually unobtainable elsewhere.

While apples are our primary focus here at Rural Ridge Orchard, we also enjoy growing for our own use other tree fruits that have merit and distinction and are difficult to find today. For the connoisseur, seeking them out is rewarding and worthwhile. Our enthusiasm has led us to collect pears that we think may grow well in the mid-Atlantic, peaches, plums, apricots, quince and the old Black Heart Cherry which is almost impossible to find these days. We propagate a selection of these fruits every year to sell to the discriminating enthusiast as well as our apples.

Many of these do not ship well, have a relatively short shelf life or other attributes that make them difficult to fit into the industrial agricultural system and mass distribution food market that dominates our food chain supply these days. The efficiency of this pattern is unparalleled and as a nation, we eat better and more cheaply than virtually anywhere in the world. Yet the price we pay is the decline of many of the special and varied flavors that come from plums such as the Green Gage and peaches like George IV, White Champion, Peregrine, and Elberta.  We sell these fruits at the farm in season.  They are often in very limited supply. “

 

 

Spring Valley Orchard

3526 Spring Valley Rd, Afton, VA 22920

“Spring Valley Orchard is a gem! Acres of cherry trees stretch across a valley surrounded on all sides by the bluest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Be sure to watch for our days and hours of operation because cherries wait to ripen when the weather is just right, generally (but not always) around Memorial Day. The season is short—just a few weeks in June—so once they ripen, come get ’em quick!

Cherries are more perishable than their berry counterparts; we recommend refrigerating them as soon as possible after picking. There’s no need to wash cherries before putting them in the fridge. In fact, washing cherries makes them more likely to spoil!

Sweet cherries keep longer when you leave the stem attached. Don’t fret if the stem comes off when you’re picking, just make sure to eat those cherries first!

Even the best cherries will only keep for a few days in the fridge, so make sure to eat or freeze them as soon as possible after picking.”

 

 

Also look at our list of farms in Virginia.