A Run on Apples : Small Crop May Leave Some Tourists Visiting Julian Disappointed

It is that time of year again, when locals in flannel and work boots cede downtown to the sweaters-and-Reeboks set each weekend. A time when the purveyors of the hottest commodity since gold ran out in 1906 get ready for an onslaught. A time when it’s easier to park and walk a mile into town than to face the traffic.

Apple Days are here again, and thousands upon thousands of tourists are descending on this town of 1,500 in search of apple pie, apple cider, apple juice, apple wine, apple butter, apple honey, apple fritters and a few dozen varieties of the fruit itself.

But they ought not delay. For this year, to the disappointment of the ranchers that grow them, the star of the show is a bit under the weather.

Depleted by a mild winter, rain during the bloom season and a spring frost, dented by hail and weakened by last year’s huge harvest, the number of local apples is down substantially.

Although the merchants who build their lucrative fall tourist season around Golden Delicious and Rome Beauties do not anticipate a bust, they acknowledge the effects of the shortage.

“I hope to make it through October,” said Ray Meyers, who leases several orchards and sells fruit, nuts and other commodities from one of the roadside stands that dot California 78 a few miles west of Julian. Instead of his normal 8,000 bushels, Meyers is anticipating about 4,000 this year. When he runs out, he will shut down.

Meyers has raised prices $2 per bushel and $1 per half-bushel over last year, but the early bird tourists already flocking to his Wynola stand are buying as much as ever, showing a special interest in apples for pies. “Business is good,” Meyers said. “We just don’t have enough apples.”

At the nearby Manzanita Ranch, where the fall frenzy at the big roadside store is crucial, manager Woody Barnes is vowing to stay open as long as people are climbing the hill in search of apples.

“Five weeks from now or six weeks from now, a lot of the people will be entirely out of Julian apples,” he said. “Some will close up and be gone. Others, like us, we’re here year-round, and if we have the market pressure, we’ll bring ‘em in.”

Barnes, one of the few ranchers who depends on the crop for his livelihood, said that if he is forced to bring in apples from other parts of California or Utah, it will be the first time since the 1950s. Other ranchers said Barnes already brings the apples in routinely.

At LaDou’s Julian Apple Mountain Orchard, it is virtually too late to lay claim to a tree for an afternoon of picking your own fruit and squeezing your own cider, said Jan LaDou. LaDou anticipates about 12,500 pounds of apples this year, about one-third to one-fourth the size of last year’s harvest.

LaDou said her trees were reserved two weeks ago, mostly by the people on her mailing list. Last year, they weren’t booked until the first weekend in October.

In Julian, where Apple Days officially begins next weekend and runs each weekend through October, the shortage of local apples is having a mild effect. Anita Nichols said that she can still purchase enough apples to pump out 200 to 300 pies daily at Mom’s Pie House, where lines stretched out the door and down the sidewalk Sunday. But Nichols said she is paying $2 to $7 more per bushel than last year.

Fred Slaughter, one of the owners of the Julian Cider Mill, acknowledged “there’s some local apples going through here, but not enough to keep going very long.” Business is not suffering, but Slaughter cannot truthfully promote local cider as much as he would like.

But Dee Baker, secretary at the town’s Chamber of Commerce, said 12,000 to 15,000 people are expected for each day of Apple Days, a crowd that warms the hearts of merchants but drives the locals out of downtown for the weekend.

“Literally, (Julian) does get taken over,” Baker said. “During the month of October, weekends especially, it belongs to the tourists.”

Apples are not the only attraction. Everything from pine cones to bees to avocado honey can be found. The weather at 4,000 feet, crisp as a perfect Granny Smith, has already brought crowds on weekends this month.

“We came up for the apples and the change of season,” said Mary Marston, a Rancho Bernardo resident. “We’re from Minnesota originally, and it seems a little bit more like fall up here.”

Rosie Sweet of Cardiff travels to Julian often to picnic in the woods and write in her journal. “Initially I came up here to get away from the city. I just wanted to get the feel of the air, the trees and the people.”

“It’s nice to get a touch of the season,” Slaughter said. “You can feel it in the air. And I think that’s what people come here for. Because, let’s face it, there’s not that much to do here.”