The Big Apple Orchard

Our take

What the record actually confirms

The Big Apple Orchard sits at 1115 Highway 30 W in Mount Vernon, Linn County, between Mount Vernon and Cedar Rapids, and the record describes it as Marti-family owned, with roughly 2,200 apple trees spread across more than 20 varieties. Hours are confirmed as strictly weekends: Saturday and Sunday, 10am-5pm, with no weekday access at all. Phone is 319-895-6457. Both u-pick and pre-picked apples are available, and the on-site store is described as selling bakery items and gifts alongside apples, with cider donuts confirmed as part of that bakery offering.

The record is direct about a sourcing limitation: no independent website for the orchard could be located, and its Facebook page returned only the business’s name and location rather than usable content. Details here instead come from Yelp and Choose Iowa listings.

A genuinely weekends-only operation

Among the orchards researched in this Iowa batch, several run daily or close to it, and even the more limited ones (like Wills Family Orchard in Adel) extend to a Friday-through-Sunday window. The Big Apple Orchard’s Saturday-and-Sunday-only schedule is more restrictive than most, which is worth planning around directly: there’s no fallback weekday visit here if a weekend doesn’t work. For anyone building a multi-orchard fall itinerary through the Cedar Rapids area, this is one to specifically slot into a Saturday or Sunday, not a weekday drive-by.

2,200 trees and 20+ varieties, without the names

The scale reported here — 2,200 trees across more than 20 varieties — puts this orchard in the same range as some of the larger operations in this research batch, like Community Orchard in Fort Dodge (5,000 trees, 15 varieties) or Center Grove Orchard in Cambridge (34 varieties). But as with those, the specific variety names aren’t given in this record, so a visitor can’t plan a trip around chasing a particular apple type here. What can be said is that a 20+-variety count suggests a reasonably long picking season is possible, spanning early through late types, even without the names to confirm which is available on a specific weekend.

An orchard with a thin digital footprint

The absence of both a working website and a substantive Facebook presence is a real gap worth calling out honestly. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything has changed operationally — smaller family orchards sometimes rely more on word-of-mouth and repeat local visitors than an online presence — but it does mean this record’s confidence in any given detail (hours, pricing, current variety availability) is lower than for orchards with an actively maintained site. The bakery-donuts-and-gifts detail specifically comes from third-party listings, not the orchard’s own channel, so treat it as likely accurate but unconfirmed firsthand.

What’s still missing

No apple varieties are named, no u-pick pricing is given, and no season-start or season-end date is confirmed. Given the thin online footprint, a phone call to 319-895-6457 is the most reliable way to confirm current weekend hours and what’s ripe before making the trip.

Bottom line

The Big Apple Orchard offers real scale — 2,200 trees, 20+ varieties, plus a bakery and gift shop — in a spot conveniently between Mount Vernon and Cedar Rapids, but its Saturday-and-Sunday-only schedule and thin online presence mean this is a trip to plan specifically around a weekend, confirmed by a phone call rather than a website check.