Burnham Orchards

Get ready for apple picking! Burnham is a cute orchard outside of Cleve with apples, pumpkins, air-​filled amusements for children and lots of fair food. The food and some produce were pretty reasonably priced, and you can walk away from the place with a jug of cider, a sizable pumpkin and a belly full of apple doughnuts for $ 20. It’s fun, and fall-​y, and nice on an October afternoon.
There are drawbacks, of course. You can pick apples, but not pumpkins – those you can select from a row of pre-​cut gourds in an open grass field. There are a fair amount of bees, due to it being a working orchard, so use caution if you have allergies. And if the shrieking cries of the pre-​adolescent set your teeth on edge, maybe you should come as early as possible. It only gets worse through the day.

I love stopping here each fall to pick up the goods – honeycrisp apples, pumpkins, squash, and cider! Can’t forget the apple fritters!
My only complaint is this: the bakery is my favorite stop in this little farm shop, but I haaaate seeing bees sitting and hovering atop my beloved pastries. There is a sign posted that states they aren’t unsanitary, etc, but it just grosses me out when bugs touch my food (attribute that to fat girl problems).
When I was here on Saturday, I picked up some pumpkin and apple butter, along with a pumpkin to carve.
Pumpkins are 34 cents per pound.
Prices are reasonable, considering most items here are strictly seasonal.
It’s a staple in my happy fall memories!

I’m only 90% sure that this is the peach orchard we went to over the summer … if I find out that it was a different one I’ll move the review.
This was such a cool experience. First of all, it’s in the middle of NOWHERE about an hour out west. We almost couldn’t find the place but had to turn up a narrow driveway and saw the storefront/​market. The woman was really nice and explained how to get to the peach trees. Basically we had to go out, turn left, and then turn into the grass at the sign. Yep, into the grass! Good thing I don’t have my dinky little ’02 Focus anymore or I wouldn’t have been able to make it.
We picked a boatload of peaches and we were (think Rob Lowe’s character from Parks & Rec) LIT-​RA-​LLY? the only ones there. It was so cool, as if someone just let us pick stuff from their backyard. Which, technically, is exactly what we did.
The ONLY complaint I have, and it’s not really a big deal because nothing came of it, is that the woman happened to mention that «she hoped that the baby didn’t step in any poison ivy.» EXCUSE me? This was after we had tromped around brush for about an hour. I was itching like crazy and thought for sure we all had it.
But we didn’t.
I’d go back again!
*No cards — cash or check only.

Berlin Heights is shot through with orchards. My parents’ place used to be the old Weaver place, which was a peach orchard. Every time you put a spade in the earth, you are sure to turn up a peach pit. My first job was in the Phillip’s cherry orchard, picking cherries. later we had our own apple and peach trees, cherry trees, grapevines, and raspberry bushes. I have never had an apple as fresh and crisp and tasty as the apples I ate in my boyhood in Berlin Heights Ohio. You can still get those apples, never mealy like Washington apples, but you need to come to Berlin Heights, and Burnham’s is the best orchard and store for apples and produce treats.