When fall days turn as crisp as apples...

Just about this time of year, the Sierra foothills offer up a little slice of heaven -- a slice of Red Delicious, Rome or Golden Delicious for the traditionalists and Fujis and Pink Ladies for the contemporary palate.

Apple Hill, a collection of about 50 family-owned orchards sprawled on forested slopes around the El Dorado County town of Camino, is about to go full tilt this weekend, with hundreds of city folks swarming there to buy their own bit of country heaven.

"It's going to be a good weekend up here," said Dave Bolster on Thursday morning. The apple scion of Bolster's Hilltop Ranch and Winery is the son of the man who, 43 years ago, intrigued his neighbor farmers with the novel idea of luring customers right into the apple orchards.

They've been coming up to Apple Hill ever since, as faithful as the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano. They will buy boxes and bags of apples, tins and tins of apple pies and mugs and jugs of apple cider from now until Thanksgiving. No middleman.

The early apple growers laid out picnics for the media to promote the agricultural perfection of the 3,200-foot altitude. They passed out paper litter bags at the State Fair in Sacramento, offering free apples to anyone who took them to the orchards.

The vision of Bolster's father, Gene, is rooted in the loamy soil as deeply as his trees. It's now the salvation of Apple Hill even as farms are disappearing from the California landscape -- 6,600 lost between 2000 and 2005, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

Though El Dorado County isn't in the top four of the state's apple-producing counties, those first 16 fruit growers who formed the Apple Hill Growers Association back then created an ambiance that will always mean apples to throngs of visitors.

Even though the harvest means serious toiling -- Bolster works sunup to sundown, more on weekends -- the growers seemed to have somehow ensured a legacy that is reaching into a third and fourth generation.

A few bends in the road from Bolster's place, at Larsen's Apple Barn, 24-year-old Scott Larsen maneuvered a forklift, hoisting wooden crates laden with 450 pounds of fruit. He went away to the University of Colorado at Boulder, but he returned to the foothills with his diploma, working the farm.

"This is what I do. Why not?" he said.

Gene Bolster, a transplanted Southern California aerospace engineer, took over his father's 67- acre ranch in 1957. When he died in 2004, he knew the son who rode the tractor next to him as a youngster was just as wedded to the land.

"You don't want to pull up those roots," said Dave Bolster, 50.

He talked in morning air that was as crisp as a Granny Smith. His golden retriever, the hue of a nicely done apple pie crust, barked at him until he flung an apple for it to chase. That's how dogs play catch up here.

Dave Bolster, one of four children, began on the farm as a kid changing sprinkler heads -- "the bane of every Apple Hill teenager" -- and later joined his father in business decisions, like expanding into blueberries in the 1980s. He's already served as president of the association his father helped found and sat on the board of directors.

"The work was hard and you didn't enjoy it at the time," he said of the early years.

But he's attached to the 44 acres he has now.

"There's the fourth generation out in the orchards now," he said of his 16-year-old son.

At Larsen's, Ray Larsen leaps into his pickup truck to nose his way into orchards where pickers are gathering 50 tons of apples a day.

Larsen, 52, hoofs it through the heavily laden trees in bib overalls. For three days a week, he's a Placerville dentist. His wife works in the bake shop. His daughter drives from Fairfield on weekends to help.

Larsen's ancestors were the first to homestead in the area, settling on a square mile. Now, the Larsens raise apples, pears, nectarines, cherries and grapes.

"I didn't have any doubts I was coming back," he said of his decision to return to the farm.

He was a little concerned about what his only son would do until he actually came home for good. Giving him something to come home to is perhaps the key, Larsen said.

The Apple Hill growers never seem to stop thinking. How about pumpkins for Halloween? Christmas trees? Blueberries in the summer? Wineries?

"You have to diversify or you're at the mercy of the market," Larsen said.

Outside Larsen's barn, a tour bus emptied and passengers sauntered inside to snatch up green and red sliced samples as workers furiously sorted and bagged fruit nearby.

Cliff Dilling, 54, clutched a bag of apples and a handful of pamphlets as he sorted through tourist literature outside the barn.

From Ventura County, he was camping in a motor home with his wife in Coloma. It was their third day at Apple Hill.

"We've come every day and bought apples every day," he said. He first came to Apple Hill 22 years ago.

There's more places to stop, more goods to buy including wine now, but the rest is pleasantly unchanged, he said.

That's just what Gene Bolster would have liked to hear.

About the writer:

• The Bee's M.S. Enkoji can be reached at (916) 321-1106 or menkoji@sacbee.com.