Ooh, there's a beauty. Pale green kissed with yellow, freckled and about the size of my fist, hanging from a thick, gnarled branch just within reach. Got it!

At that moment, the apple's twin, on the opposite side of the branch, drops from the tree. It's smaller, lopsided, with a rough brown patch on one side. Can't bring myself to leave it on the ground, though, so into the bucket it goes, too. That one's for applesauce.

It's apple season on Apple Hill, and the trees are studded with gorgeous fruit that you can't miss even from the car, cruising along Larsen Drive or Cable Road or North Canyon Road around the community of Camino.

Several dozen growers tucked into those hills and dales east of Placerville are happy to sell you their crop. But if you want absolutely the freshest apples, you have to stop at one of the U-pick orchards, grab a bucket and head out into the trees to claim your treasures.

If buying produce at a farmers market is the mark of a locavore, does picking it from the very tree it grows on make one a "microvore"?

Denver Dan's, just off Larsen Drive in the eastern half of Apple Hill, opened Labor Day for U-pick customers, with the "best crop in five years," thanks to excellent weather, reports Denver Dale Martin, a.k.a. "Denver Dan."

Already about a third of his apples have been harvested by customers, about 10 pounds at a time, which is the average purchase these days, he says. Twenty years ago it was 40 pounds per customer, but "the world has changed," he says. "People don't can anymore."

The price, meanwhile, has climbed to $1 a pound from 10 cents a pound in Apple Hill's early days, but U-pick business is on the upswing. This year, nine sites offer U-pick for at least some of their apples. (See list at right.)

Martin, 77 and long retired from a career at Western Electric, is one of the original Apple Hill growers. In the mid-1960s, he and a handful of other orchard owners were talked into promoting and selling on site – rather than through grocery stores or to cider mills – by the late Gene Bolster, whose Bolster's Hilltop Ranch is just up the road.

Back then, a pear blight was responsible for the birth of the apple-marketing idea. Growers first offered a dessert "smorgasbord," remembers Jan Bolster, Gene's widow, with a different apple treat at each orchard site during one weekend in fall. But that got to be overwhelming, she said.

Over the years, Apple Hill growers have added different customer enticements to their farms: train rides, pumpkin patches, bakeries, fudge kitchens, fishing holes and crafts vendors.

Denver Dan's at one time had pony rides, Martin recalls, and for a while sponsored a bake-off. "But a lot of people wanted to taste, and nobody wanted to bake."

The on-site bake shop and jelly-making kitchen, under the eye of his wife, Pat, are plenty busy these days.

Martin switched Denver Dan's over to an all-U-pick orchard a number of years ago after hearing of the success of U-pick places in Connecticut and Ohio.

But leaving the harvest to the customers wasn't an easy adjustment: The apples don't always get picked at the optimum time, and lots are wasted.

"You have to learn to sleep at night with your apples on the ground," he said.

Today, those apples number 50 varieties on 8 1/2 acres, ranging from the August- maturing Gravensteins to late fall's Arkansas Blacks. Trendy apple varieties, from the Granny Smiths to Galas and now Fujis, can be found at Denver Dan's, but none of those is Martin's favorite.

"Golden Delicious, and right off the tree," he says emphatically. Cold storage, he notes, lets stores sell apples that are as much as a year old or from as far away as New Zealand.

Denver Dan's has a few trees as old as 50 years – and Larsen Apple Barn has one tree estimated at 100 years old – but 25 years is about average. A full-size tree produces about 40 bushels, which would fill 80 of those white cardboard boxes with the red Apple Hill logo.

Even with such a variety in his orchard, Martin still gets asked about types he doesn't grow. (After all, he says, there are about 4,000 types of eating apples in the world "that we know of.") Pink Lady is the latest he's received requests for, and if he plants those, fans, you'll have to wait four or five years for the trees to mature.

Faced with so many kinds of apples – Sonata! Winter Banana! Spitzenburg! Parkdale Beauty! – beyond the common varieties, how does a U-picker know which to choose?

"Eat one first," Martin says. And he offers a Golden Delicious, right off the tree. It's crisp, juicy, sweet without being overly so.

Yep, gotta get some of those. Where's my bucket?

Call The Bee's Kathy Morrison, (916) 321-1080.