Recreating this experience on the West Coast can take a little doing. For the full sticky-fingered, apple-and-doughnut experience, you need to hit the road and head up to the gold country northeast of Sacramento, near Placerville. To Apple Hill, to be exact, where the foothills of the Sierras offer the warm days, chilly nights, and colder winters that apples like. Apple fritters, hayrides, cider and u-picks abound, although the varieties of apples lean more towards Galas and Fujis-- sweeter, milder apples that don't need as many below-freezing winter chill hours as their hardier East Coast cousins. Most likely to scratch that East-Coast itch is the charming Rainbow Orchards, in Camino, which offers excellent fresh-pressed cider and hot cider doughnuts in their barn, along with sprawling acres of apple trees, live bluegrass music, and lots of room for picnicking.

Closer to home, you can take a meandering drive on the back roads west of Petaluma to the Chileno Valley Ranch. Here, between folded hills still lion-colored from summer's long dry days, are sprig-headed quail skittering across the road while hawks ride the rising air currents overhead. Herds of black Holsteins and buff Jerseys drowse beneath the oak trees.

You can see the small organic orchard as you drive up, planted on a gentle slope running down to the barn. Nearby are chicken coops, some vigorously baah-ing goats and sheep, and a lavish flower garden brimming with roses. Sally Gale, who owns the ranch with her husband Mike (the ranch property has been in her family since 1856), is usually on hand to walk pickers through the trees, pointing out green, grapefruit-sized Mutsus (great for baking) and dainty lunchbox-sized Pink Ladies and Pinovas, along with Molly's Delicious and fat, late-ripening Arkansas Black Twigs. In the barn, where you go to pay for your haul ($2/lb) is a small table with some of the ranch's other products, which might include eggs, tomatoes, red pears, dried beans, and the ranch's own grass-fed local beef.

If the scene at Chileno Valley is a little low-key for your taste, then don't miss the signs for the Peter Pumpkin Patch on your way back. Follow the (naturally) pumpkin-shaped signs to Spring Hill Road, where the otherwise cow-centric Spring Hill Cheese Company dairy is decked out in full haybale-and-pumpkin drag through the end of October. There is an acres-wide field dotted with fat orange jack-o-lanterns on the vine, each more carve-worthy than the last. And then there are stacks of edible winter squash in all sizes and shapes (carnival, acorn, rouge vif d'etampes, munchkin, banana, and more); pyramids of hay to climb and jump from; a tractor-pulled wagon; even a very patient cow to milk. The air, it's true, is tangy with the smell of cow pat (a scent that always made a rancher friend breathe deep and exhale with satisfaction, saying, "Ah, the smell of money!"), but there are plenty of picnic tables nonetheless.

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Apple picking, pumpkin patching, & the joys of the cider doughnut