Wasem's Fruit Farm in Milan is running an Apples for Others program this year. They had a tremendous fruit crop, and rather than having it go to waste they have organized special u-pick dates for individuals and groups to come to harvest the extras to donate to Food Gatherers. Bring your own bags.

I was out at the orchard on Saturday with my two boys, and between the three of us we picked about 23 pounds of apples in about 30 minutes. Ask inside for directions to the parts of the orchard that still have apples left on the trees; we picked mostly Ida Reds. Make sure not to pick up any apples from the ground. There are a few ladders in the fields which you can move in place to pick the fruit that's on branches too high up to reach by hand. My hooded sweatshirt ended up being good clothing to pick in, since the hand warmer pocket was useful to store apples temporarily while picking.

When we were finished, we brought the apples back to the office and dumped them carefully into a big bin, which we learned holds 17 to 18 bushels of apples. Food Gatherers has picked up 20 of these bins already.

I spoke with Jan Upston, an Ann Arbor Farmers Market regular and one of the owners of Wasem's Fruit Farm, to ask her about the program. She said that this had been an unusually good crop, with a relatively mild fall leaving lots of edible apples on the trees. Wasem's no longer sells apples wholesale, and they have picked what they expect that they can sell at retail, so rather than having the fruit go to waste they decided to run a special u-pick second harvest.

No trip to an apple orchard is complete without donuts, which are available at the farm store. They also sell unpasteurized cider, fresh apples, pie pumpkins, and donuts (did I mention donuts already? I will mention them again).

I'll have more details about how these apples are put to use after I talk to Food Gatherers.

Edward Vielmetti picks apples with his children for AnnArbor.com, and they assisted with the editing of this article.