Dressel Farms harvests 100 to 200 bins of apples daily in season, with each bin weight 800 pounds. But drought this year has made the harvest smaller.

NEW PALTZ — When steady rain at long last blanketed the arid Hudson Valley this past week, Tim Dressel watched the distressed yellow-green leaves on his apple trees get wet. He felt the scorched plants around him grow happy. “It’s so nice. I’m loving it. Maybe I’m a horticultural dork,” he said, adding, “ It was a very bad summer.”

Dressel is the great-grandson of Fred Dressel, who bought (and renamed) Dressel Farms in New Paltz in 1957, after being foreman there for over 25 years. What started at about 75 acres has grown to around 400 today, 300 of which are devoted to apples. Dressel Farms also grows and sells other fruit (peaches, strawberries, raspberries) plus ice cream. The operation, including a road stand, is run by three generations of Dressels. “My grandfather is 86 and still comes to work every day,” Dressel said.

Rain on an orchard during harvest provides a rare moment of downtime; picking in the rain is more likely to bruise fruit, among other complications. Dressel, who wears many hats at his family business, used the break to make a batch of hard cider for the farm’s taproom, blending honey and honey crisp juice into a tank. The view from where he worked was an orchard where three-quarters of the apples are sunburned.

“Everything is small; lack of water means small fruit,” Dressel said. “We are irrigating much as we can, but it’s supplemental, not primary source.”

Apple harvest at Dressel Farms starts mid-August with varieties that ripen early, not typically the most popular ones. But any local orchard needs something on the shelves to sell and these varieties are good for making cider.

“People want apple cider the first day they get to the orchard,” Dressel said. By the third week of August, Ginger Golds are usually ready, as are Premiere Honeycrisps, an earlier growing — and slightly tarter — strain of the perennial favorite.

Dressel Farms has been a family-run business since 1957, when Fred Dressel (far right, above) bought the farm. Here he stands with his son, Rod Sr., and grandson, Rod Jr., who is holding Fred’s great-grandson, Tim.

Weather permitting, Dressel Farms harvests 100 to 200 bins of apples daily in season. A bin is 800 pounds. Dressel himself doesn’t pick; he and his family members divide other farm work. His father coordinates what needs to be picked where and when. Dressel serves as a post-harvest manager, spending his days on a forklift organizing, logging, treating and putting things away for winter.

To get the apples off the trees, Dressel Farms employs 20 laborers picking six days a week; New York state requires a day of rest every seven days. “Our guys would prefer not to. They are here to make money, so they want to pick daily,” Dressel said. About a dozen of their workers are year-round employees; some have been with them for 20 years and have families who also work for Dressel Farms.

Dressel also employs temporary agricultural workers from mid-August to mid-October. These workers come on H-2A visas, typically from Mexico. While the agriculture community has mixed feelings about this government program, including the overtime hours threshold, Dressel called it the “lifeblood to farms in this country to have that labor available. Otherwise, no one is doing it.”

The H-2A visa program was never shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, though COVID did run through half of the Dressel Farms crew early on in 2021. “That was a big setback. The apples weren’t harvested on time. They got overripe. We couldn’t pick fast enough.” Dressel said it affected their bottom line. 

Dressel Farm apples are sold on site, but most sales are wholesale through Hudson River Fruit Distributors in Milton. They don’t always know where their apples wind up, but some have gone to Stop and Shop and BJs, Dressel said. They used to export some, too, to places like Russia and Israel.

Exports involve extra regulatory hoops to jump through, so Dressel isn’t unhappy they don’t export anymore. Farming is hard enough — this year alone there are labor, pricing and weather problems. Every year Dressel wonders if they can continue, but he says, “a turning wheel is hard to stop.”

Dressel said he’s seen the weather change noticeably year to year — “not for the better,” adding: “All of these ‘once-in-a-hundred-years’ things have happened multiple times. This extreme weather is really concerning.”

The only positive of an incredibly dry summer is it disrupted the mating process of pests, so spraying was down on the farm this year. Dressel Farms deploys integrated pest management, which is considered environmentally sensitive.

Inflation and high fuel prices mean Dressel is raising its retail prices on site about 10 percent this year. But the family has no control over wholesale prices. They don’t know what they will be paid until they get a check from their distributor. Sometimes they even lose money. Larger operations fare better in the wholesale market. Dressel is considered medium-sized for New York state as well as the Hudson Valley. 

“We are struggling. We have the same amount of apples this year, but the volume is down 25 percent because the size is smaller,” Dressel said. “It’s going to be a lean winter.”

For now, the farm’s focus is harvesting, including U-pick season which will start Sept. 17. (Dressel Farms’ 2022 U-pick strawberry season was canceled due to crop loss.)

U-pick used to start Labor Day weekend, but the family shifted it back. “Who wants to put flannel on and pick apples when it’s 80 degrees?” Dressel said. By mid-October, the farm is overrun with visitors. (Locals, take note: To avoid the crowds, pick in early September when the Honeycrisp and Gala are ripe and “the line for donuts is nonexistent.”)

Dressel doesn’t have a favorite apple; he discovered in his 20s that he is allergic. He used to loved Empire, but thinks now he’d be a fan of Snapdragons. While he’s grateful for the recent rain, as he considers U-pick season, he’s hoping fall won’t be too rainy. He recalls seasons past when crowds got stuck in the muddy parking lot.

“Just pray for rain at night and move on,” he said. “It’s the farmer’s way. There’s always next year.”

A born-and-bred New Yorker who spent childhood weekends and summers all over the Hudson Valley, Alexandra Zissu transplanted fully to New Paltz in 2013 with her family to be close to the farms that feed them-the best move ever. Waking daily to a view of the Gunks sustains her. She's obsessive about family meal, loves trying to grow vegetables with her two girls, talks to trees as she walks in the woods, fosters kittens, and has written six books, all about the environment and health.