The Colts Neck Farm Circuit Is Having a Strange Summer. Here's What's Actually Open.

If your family has a July routine that runs Rt 34 south to Delicious Orchards, cuts across CR 537 to Eastmont, and loops back through Battleview for cider donuts, this year is going to feel off. The country stores are open. The bakeries are baking. What's missing is most of what you usually pick.

An unusual heat-then-freeze in mid-April didn't spare the orchards that anchor Colts Neck's summer identity. The good news for anyone who lives here: the circuit still works. It just needs a different map.

What happened in the third week of April

A stretch of near-90-degree days pushed fruit trees into early bloom, and then, four days later, temperatures dropped into the low 20s. In mid-April 2026, New Jersey experienced an unusual weather sequence that devastated the agricultural sector. A prolonged warm spell pushed temperatures above 90 degrees in some areas, causing fruit trees and crops to flower earlier than normal. That warm period was immediately followed by a sharp temperature drop, with lows in the 20s recorded across parts of the state between April 19 and April 22. The timing was particularly destructive as crops were at a critical developmental stage when the freeze hit.

The scale is not a rounding error. Gov. Mikie Sherrill has declared a state of emergency in all 21 counties, a move that should ultimately open up funding to help farmers recover from damages the state estimates could top $300 million. The state's own agriculture secretary called it "a generational freeze," "Almost like a hundred-year storm — almost a perfect event."

That is the backdrop for every farm stand between Rt 34 and Wemrock Road this summer.

Stand by stand, what to expect

Battleview Orchards, 91 Wemrock Rd, Freehold. The country store is open on its usual schedule, and the bakery is still turning out the cider donuts and pies that make the parking lot fill up on weekends. Pick-your-own is a different story this year. The extreme temperatures in April resulted in total crop loss of Sour Cherries, Peaches, Nectarines and Apples at Battleview, per the orchard's own posted update. If your kids look forward to July peach picking on Wemrock Road, that trip is not happening in 2026. Strawberries came and went in June. Call (732) 462-0756 before you drive over for anything PYO.

Delicious Orchards, 320 Rt 34 South. The market and bakery are the reason most residents stop here anyway, and both are running. Berry Farm at Colts Neck sits in the same complex at 320 Rt 34 and typically hosts the summer PYO experience for younger kids. Expectations should be tempered. Even before this year, reviewers noted that "only blackberries were available because last year's storms" wiped out the raspberries. The 2026 freeze layers a fresh problem on top of a farm that was already recovering.

Eastmont Orchards, CR 537 just east of the Rt 34 intersection. Eastmont is best known as the fall apple and pumpkin stop, and that season is likely to be leaner than usual across the region. For summer, watch for a hand-lettered corn sign out front, which historically signals their end-of-summer bicolor sweet corn. If the sign goes up, buy some. Statewide, sweet corn was not part of the tree-fruit collapse, and Eastmont's corn does not appear every year even in good ones.

Carm's Farm. A working option for families with younger kids that is not built around tree fruit. General admission is $10, animal feed $3, barrel train $5, corn maze $7, and apple cannon $7 for five shots, on-site payment only. The 2026 season runs from March 20th, weekdays 11:00 AM to 5:00 PM and weekends 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM. Petting zoo, gem mining, picnic tables. Contact is (732) 800-1433.

Laurino Farm Market, Rt 34 at Laird Road. The classic roadside stand at the corner. Vegetables, not tree fruit. This is the stop that quietly matters more this summer than in a normal year.

The crops the freeze didn't kill

The Rutgers Plant and Pest Advisory has been publishing weekly updates on which crops are salvageable, and the pattern is consistent. The freeze event April 20-21, 2026, has had wide ranging impacts on fruit crops statewide, including but not limited to peaches, nectarines, cherries, apples, pears, and plums. Across the state, significant injury to blossoms and young fruit has been confirmed, with many orchards reporting substantial crop loss.

What survived, roughly:

• Blueberries and blackberries. These bloomed later than the stone fruits. Surviving crops like strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and vegetables could help offset some of the losses. "Blueberries and blackberries look great, and this is the year for pick-your-own vegetables."
• Sweet corn. Not a tree crop, planted well after the freeze. Look for it in August at Eastmont and at Laurino.
• Tomatoes, peppers, squash, eggplant, herbs. Vegetable season is unaffected. Farm-stand vegetables are the reliable produce category this summer.
• A limited pocket of apples. In many blocks, little to no viable fruit remains, though isolated pockets of surviving fruit may still be present depending on site conditions. In northern counties, where bloom was still ongoing at the time of the freeze, damage remains variable but is often still significant in more exposed locations. Any local peaches or apples you find later in the season will be scarcer and priced accordingly.

The one detail worth internalizing: if the label at the farm stand says the fruit is from somewhere else this summer, that is not a scam. It is how most stands are staying open.

"This is one of the hardest hits we've ever had. We will persevere." — Terhune Orchards, in a public plea for support after the freeze wiped out its peach, Asian pear, and cherry crops

How the summer rhythm changes

In a normal year, the Colts Neck circuit reads left to right across the week. Weekday afternoons at Delicious Orchards for the market. Saturday morning peach picking at Battleview. Sunday drives out to Eastmont for whatever's ready. Late August, sweet corn everywhere.

This year, tighten the rotation to what is actually working:

Wednesdays. The Bell Works farmers market runs 11 AM to 4 PM in Holmdel through the season and is a short drive up Rt 34. It aggregates growers who did not lose everything.

Fridays. The Freehold Farmers Market opens at 11 AM downtown, on the Battleview side of the map. Pair it with a stop at the Battleview country store rather than a PYO trip.

Saturdays and Sundays. Berry picking at Berry Farm at Colts Neck if it's open, Carm's Farm for kids, Laurino Farm Market for the week's vegetables. The Monmouth Battlefield Special program on 7-04-2026 in Manalapan and the Monmouth County Fair in late July round out the weekends that would normally center on stone fruit.

Weeknights. The country stores at Battleview and Delicious Orchards close early. Plan bakery pickups before six.

A short list before Labor Day

1. Call Battleview at (732) 462-0756 before any assumed PYO trip. What is or isn't picking is changing week to week.
2. Watch for the corn sign in front of Eastmont on CR 537 starting in early August. It does not go up every year, and this is a year to catch it.
3. If you buy peaches or apples from any Monmouth County stand this summer, ask where they were grown. New Jersey stone fruit that survived will be a small, prized category, and the label matters.
4. Budget more for local fruit than last year. Growers throughout the region have warned that if available at all, apples and peaches will be scarce, and pricey, this summer and fall.
5. If you have a favorite orchard, spend money in the country store this year. Cider donuts, pies, jams, honey, gift baskets. The stands that make it to 2027 are the ones neighbors kept walking into in 2026.

A last thought for residents

Colts Neck is a place where a lot of decisions, from where families settle to how weekends get spent, tie back to the working farms along Rt 34 and CR 537. As time goes on there are fewer and fewer of these kind of places and for sure in prime real estate areas such as Colts Neck NJ. A season like this one is a reminder of how thin the margin is between having an orchard down the road and reading about one that used to be there.

The circuit still works this summer. The stops are just weighted differently, and knowing the difference is the kind of thing that separates people who live here from people driving through.

If you're thinking about the way a Colts Neck property fits into the rhythm of the year, or you have questions about a home in one of the neighborhoods along this route, Gregg Casaburi is glad to talk. Let's connect.