KEWADIN -- John King worried about his apple crop when the weather turned cold in early April, then fretted some more as his fruit baked during a dry, hot summer.
"We were scared to death we were not going to be able to come through with a crop," King said.
But Mother Nature relented over the past six weeks, released some much-needed rain and cooler temperatures, and -- voila! -- King's apples are good as gold.
"We got just enough rain that the apples are sizing nicely," King said.
The King family began picking its 40 acres of Gala, Honeycrisp and McIntosh apples in western Antrim County late last week, part of a statewide Michigan apple crop projected at around 790 million pounds. That's down 7 percent from last year, but much better than some growers expected as drought-like conditions gripped the region for much of the summer.
"It's been a long road to get here," King said.
Area growers are also working to get their products in the hands of local consumers. Karen Drake set out a few baskets of apples to sell at The Village at Grand Traverse Commons farmer's market on Friday. She runs the Stoney Point Orchards in Suttons Bay with her husband.
The Drakes are almost finished with the Ginger Gold apple harvest that started in August, and are ready to focus on McIntosh, Honeycrisp and Spartan apples.
"People want apples now," she said. "It gets cold and they want apples."
Liz Saylor picked up a bag of Honeycrisps just as the market opened on Friday.
"I love Honeycrisps, so I've been waiting until they became available," she said, adding that she eats one a day when they're in season, just like the popular saying suggests.
This year's warm weather pushed ahead the harvest about two weeks for some fruit farmers, said Nikki Rothwell, coordinator of the Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Station in Leelanau County.
Some are already harvesting McIntosh apples, which take about a week to pick, she said. Farmers also are spot-picking Honeycrisps.
Grower Bill Casier said he planned to pick a few Honeycrisps this weekend for his fruit stand at Sleeping Bear Orchards in Empire.
Harvesting of the Empire apple variety starts next week, but he'll send those to the caramel apple market after the lack of rain left them too small to be sliced and sold at McDonald's.
Small sizes also will delay his Spy apple harvest, which could use a little more help in the form of short-term rainfall.
"I keep praying for rain -- significant rain -- hoping we can size those up a little bit more," he said.
Growers had better luck over at Evans Brothers Fruit Company in Frankfort.
"Our expectations are for a good harvest," farmer Mike Evans said. "We've got some great size on the apples."
It was the heat early this year that helped the apples grow. Now this weekend's cool weather should aid their color and overall quality, he said.
The McIntosh harvest starts next week for Evans, and he's waiting until the Honeycrisps are just right.
Overall, apple sizes are better than expected because farmers did a good job thinning out the crop through the dry growing season, Rothwell said.
Casier and Evans also said they have enough workers to pick apples.
"The labor force seems to be pretty good," Rothwell said. "The migrants from cherries can go right to apples, so there isn't as much of a gap."
The state's 790 million pound apple harvest is about average since the poor fruit-growing summer of 2002, said Vince Matthews. He's deputy director of the state office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service that tracks crop production in Michigan. The final crop may well be a bit larger than projected because those forecasts are issued Aug. 1, before weather conditions improved.
"What we've seen in August has been more favorable," Matthews said.
The national apple harvest is expected to reach 9.9 billion pounds this year, down about 6 percent from last year, Matthews said. Michigan's total ranks third in the country, behind 1.3 billion pounds from New York and 5.4 billion pounds from the state of Washington.
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