A sunny, dry summer produced a bountiful crop of the reddest, sweetest apples at Northwest Ohio orchards 20 years ago.

Area residents and schoolchildren trekked to local farms to enjoy the fall tradition of picking pecks of perfect apples. There were 152 apple orchards in the state in 2005, but as Kathy Lutz, program assistant for the Ohio Apple Marketing program, assured The Blade that year, Northwest Ohio’s farms grew the best.

In this Blade archive photo, Chris Schonter gives his son Ryan a boost to the top of the tree while picking apples at MacQueen’s Orchard.

Hugh and Martha MacQueen planted their first apple tree on their Garden Road property in Springfield Twp. in 1936, and the orchard has since grown to 175 acres filled with varieties of apples and peach trees.

These days, res

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