Lyda Farms

This is a family-​owned apple orchard and more on highway 64 between Hendersonville and Bat Cave. It’s a fall ritual of ours to come here and buy pumpkins to carve into jack-​o-​lanterns for Halloween. If you check their website, you’ll see that they offer a huge selection of apple varieties, but I usually get their Granny Smith since they make terrific pies and cakes. You can buy them by the basketful. As you pull in, you’ll be impressed by their huge selection of squashes – some quite large and strange-​looking like the pink banana, the ultra butternut and their New England Blue Hubbard – all of which bake into excellent pies and casseroles. They often have champion pumpkins that are too large to lift. Many of them are warty – just perfect for Halloween. Depending on how the crops do during that year, they will offer all manner of vegetables such as sweet corn, okra, potatoes, fruits, and so forth. They also bottle their own preserves and fruit juices such as apple/​blackcherry that are quite delicious. One year we bought some very colorful Indian corn and a huge New England Blue Hubbard, and they were so attractive that we kept them in the kitchen until spring. Have fun.