On a hillside along Belchertown’s Sabin Street, a quintessential western Massachusetts backroad, a myriad of apple trees stretches across approximately 70 of the 200 total acres at UMass Amherst’s Cold Spring Orchard Research and Education Center. This month, the beautiful landscape becomes a busy destination for visitors as the orchard’s apple season gets underway.

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The pace behind the scenes at the orchard’s barn-red buildings and across its fields is just as busy.  Staff are out in the fields gathering the season’s harvest and regularly stocking the orchard’s farmstand, also known as “the store,” while visitors flock to pick-your-own (PYO), which officially opened last Saturday, Sept. 12.

“Now through mid-October is the best time for PYO, but if that’s not your thing we have the store that’s open seven days a week,” says Shawn Mcintre, Cold Spring Orchard’s farm superintendent. “It’s busy in the store through November because we process apple cider, and people want to have our cider for Thanksgiving.”

The arrival of fall and apple season means the public can continue to enjoy the fruits of the orchard’s labor, following a fleeting peach season. For Mcintire and his dedicated crew, however, apple season is both the culmination of months of work and the start of another demanding stretch at a farm where agricultural research and commercial production take place side-by-side.

For Mcintire, the work ranges from winter purchasing to spring planting and pruning to managing irrigation and spraying. By September, the work has shifted into harvesting, packing and deliveries. Mcintire is coordinating equipment, staffing, irrigation and everything else that keeps the operation moving.

Mcintire describes the job simply: “I wear a lot of different hats,” he says—although the Boston Red Sox cap is probably his favorite.

The job has changed considerably since McIntyre first came to Cold Spring decades ago, first as a tree climber during his teen years, then as a staff member charged to help revive the orchard. “I just wanted to find something I really enjoy,” he recalls. “And this was it.”

Mcintire explains the orchard once had large, widely spaced apple trees, but today, new high-density blocks can contain roughly 2,000 trees per acre. A specialized tree planter has made the work far more efficient, allowing a small crew to plant rows of young trees at a much greater pace. Another machine nicknamed the “plucker ducker” by the crew, carries workers down the rows as they pick apples and place them on a belt that moves the fruit into large crates.

The orchard currently grows 30-36 apple varieties, and the harvest moves not only through the farmstand but to UMass Amherst Dining on the main campus, partnering farms throughout New England, and supermarkets like Big Y. Weekly apple deliveries during the season will range between 110 to 200 bushels, which is roughly 11,000-25,000 apples depending on the size.

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But as Mcintire describes it, “there’s always something” that arises and interrupts the pace. The weather changes and pests—the usual suspects and new ones—arrive. 

Alongside the daily management, the orchard serves another purpose as a working research site. Jacob Aliengena is an extension technical educator who, like Mcintire, first came to work in the orchard in his teens. More than a dozen years later, he wears two hats. 

“The majority of my job is working with the farm crew,” he said. “And then when I got this technical educator job, I started working with the professors as well.”

He explains his role is to help integrate a research project into practical realities of a working farm—from tractors and sprayers to equipment and horticultural practices. 

“The research that we’re doing, we have to make sure it doesn’t interrupt the business side,” Aliengena said, “And then vice versa, the business side shouldn’t interrupt the research.”

Aliengena said one of the multiple research projects being conducted at the orchard in collaboration with their partnering farms includes an ongoing pest-monitoring project involving grafted apple trees, led by extension professor Jaime Pinero. Researchers use the trees to attract pests, such as the plum curculio and apple maggot fly, then monitor when the insects first become active. 

Plum curculio is one of the apples’ major early-season pests. The insect lays its eggs beneath the skin of developing fruit, leaving a distinctive crescent-shaped blemish that can render the apple unmarketable, Aliengena said.

By monitoring pest activity, researchers can better determine when insects are becoming active and use that information to improve the timing of pest-management treatments. The work is part of the orchard’s integrated pest management approach, designed to provide research that can be used by growers throughout Massachusetts and New England. 

To both Mcintire and Aliengena, the value of research is underscored by the challenges growers face every year with extreme and changing weather conditions. This spring, a late frost raised concerns about damage to developing apple blossoms at Cold Spring this season, but the crop appeared to fare well.

Mcintire believes you can’t beat Mother Nature, so “you just learn how to ride the waves…and look at the glass as half full.”

Together, the researchers and the farm operations staff keep the farm going, but there’s also a key third contributor: the public.

“When people come here to buy apples, it keeps the place afloat,” Mcintire said. “The public is the backbone, really.”

UMass Cold Spring Orchard is located at 391 Sabin St. in Belchertown.  Seasonal hours are seven days a week, 10 a.m.– 4 p.m., August to Thanksgiving. PYO and store sales are cash and check only. For more information, visit the Cold Spring Orchard website.