Pick a peck of apples On her tiptoes, Hattie Plumb of Howard fills her pail with apples, Sunday, at Apple Orchard & Landscaping, south of De Pere (photo by Tina Gohr). By Tina M. Gohr News-Chronicle Apple Valley Orchard & Landscaping co-owner Jerry Van Elzen parked cars Sunday as fast as a neighborhood parking lot surrounding Lambeau Field. "It helps that the Packers aren't playing today,'' he said with a smile. One and a half hours into the morning, Van Elzen directed 81 cars loaded with apple pickers reaping the harvest of his 3,000 trees. "Three hundred percent better than last year,'' beamed Van Elzen. For starters, "we didn't have cortlands. Last year we didn't have any because the blossoms froze out. We had our early apples, but none of our later apples,'' he said as he distributed grocery bags to cars needing bags to pick the sweet apples. The tree branches literally bend to the ground overloaded with crisp apples. The season is running a little later than normal. "Usually the macintosh are off the trees by now,'' he explained. The orchard currently offers macintosh, cortlands, conel reds and molly delicious. The conel red is a cross between a cortland and a greening. The most popular picking (or already picked) apple right now is the cortland. "It's a good cooking apple, like for pies, but it is also a good eating apple,'' Van Elzen said. "A good all-around apple. Same for the macintosh. Cortlands are firmer than the mac. You would want to make applesauce with the macs, too. It little sweeter than the cortland.'' A grocery bag will hold a half-bushel of apples that sells between $9 and $10 a bag (depending how full it is). Relying on the weather, Apple Valley, Hwy 32-57, De Pere, expects the season to end the first week of November.