Every year, when the mornings turn cool and the first new-crop apples come in, I think about my great-grandmother's farm on Cleveland Avenue in Stevensville, Michigan.
I was about five years old. My mom, my brother Tony and I would be up at six to pick and load the roadside stand before anyone drove by. It ran on the honor system: people pulled over for fruit and vegetables picked that morning and left their money in a jar. My job was the strawberries, two pints for a dollar. I had to make sure every stem was tucked down and the nicest red berry was facing up.
"I think that's really where I got my passion for produce."
Down the street, my cousins grew Concord grapes. If you've ever walked a row of Concords at harvest, you know that smell. Years later I took my wife down those same rows, and one breath took me straight back to being a kid on that farm.
That's the thing I've always loved about this business. Produce never stays the same. Summer is peaches and plums, winter is citrus, and fall is apples and cider. Or, as I used to tell my crew at Dominick's:
"Nobody gets excited over a can of corn or a box of pasta."
Why fall is the best time for an apple
Apples are harvested from late summer into fall, and new-crop apples are the crispest, juiciest and most fragrant you'll get all year.
I buy by the name on the box. Growers like Stemilt and Ghee Whiz have earned my trust over the years, and the reason is one word:
"When you have a trusted grower, you get consistently the best quality — and that's the key word, consistently."
Honeycrisp is our apple of choice whenever the season allows, and people really love the organic Honeycrisps. That's why our Organic Honeycrisp basket is on the table all year.
How I pick an apple
- Feel the weight first. "You want to hold that piece of fruit and feel the weight in your hand. That ensures it's loaded with juice inside."
- Then the color, and the name on the box. The grower matters as much as the fruit.
- Then no bruises. Anything banged up gets set aside. Pieces are sized to fit the basket.
Every basket gets "live eyes"
After more than 45 years in produce, the part I'm proudest of isn't any one apple. It's the people who build the baskets. Every piece goes in by hand and is placed for color, so you'll never find two green apples next to each other. Somebody looks at every apple, every pear, every orange, right down to whether a cracker in the box is cracked.
Everyone who builds baskets at Northstar hears the same thing on their first day: if you wouldn't want your own family to receive it, it doesn't leave the warehouse.
Thank you
I started Northstar in 1999. One of our longtime customers orders every year, and afterward he checks in with every single person who received a basket. He tells me who loved the big grapes, who loved the apples, whose oranges were perfect. That's the part that keeps me going.
"Over the years they basically become like family."
Thank you for being part of ours. Here's to a crisp, beautiful fall.
