'Great growing season' means apples and pumpkins are ready ahead of schedule, local farmers say

Following a summer with intense rain and continuous heat, local apple and pumpkin farmers are weighing in on how their growing seasons turned out. 

Tyler Downey is the owner of Downey's Big Apple Farm in Maryhill, just outside of Breslau. 

The farm has been operating locally since 2019, but his father opened the first Downey's location in Caledon in 2007. The orchard has a pick-your-own apple experience with 17 different varieties available for people to grab. 

Downey says this year's weather allowed for apples to start being picked roughly a week ahead of schedule, something he said he's never seen during his time in the business. 

"We're about seven to 10 days ahead of usual harvest, which was very nice," he said. "We're averaging about 140 to 150 apples per tree."

Downey adds honeycrisp apples have been most popular this year and are roughly one to two pounds each.

LISTEN | Local farmers take stock of their crops after warm, wet summer weather:

The Morning Edition - K-W7:29Local farmers take stock of their crops after warm, wet summer weather

Tyler Downey of Downey's Big Apple farm and pumpkin farmer Byron Good of The Good Farm describe how their crops turned out this year with the unpredictable summer weather.

Pumpkin season

While apple season is in full swing, local pumpkin farmers are just starting to sell their crops. 

Friday was opening day at Good Family Farm. Byron Good and his wife Karen have owned the farm since 1994. 

They sell over 120 different varieties of gourds, squash and pumpkins.

Good says in the orange pumpkins, they have a variety from pie-sized ones to some that grew to be more than 100 lbs this year.

"It was actually a good growing season. Everything's early because we had lots of sunshine and it was fairly warm already in May and June," he explained. "It flowered early and we have good rain, especially in July."

This season, Good says harvest was ahead of schedule compared to last year.

"In August, it was cool last year, so when we opened in the middle of September, people wanted to start buying squash, but it wasn't quite mature yet," he said.

He says this year, everyone he knows has ended up with good crops. 

WATCH | Pumpkin season begins for local farmers:

Pumpkin season begins for local farmers

3 months ago

Duration 1:51

Good Family Farm in Waterloo officially opened on Friday. The market features a variety of pumpkins, squash and gourds. CBC K-W's Karis Mapp visited the farm on opening day to hear about this year's growing season.

While orange pumpkins become more popular closer to Halloween, Good says to start off the season, people are mostly interested in decorative ones. 

"A lot of the pastel pumpkins, the pink ones, the blue ones," he said. 

"A lot of people want to start eating squash. We have a lot of varieties that you can't get in grocery stores. So the first day that we open, we sell a lot of them because that's what people are looking for."