ISLAND VIEW - Fred Everett walks through the orchard overlooking the St. John River Valley that his family has operated for more than 200 years. Trees, more than a century old, bow, heavy with apples. The aroma of ripening fruit fills the air.

"I love this place, no two ways about it,'' Everett, 86, says. "I don't get the urge to go anywhere or see anything else.

"When the apples start colouring up, well, I just can't explain the way I feel. But I think it comes from growing them."

Fred Everett grew up on this heavenly plot north of Fredericton settled in the 1780s by his Loyalist ancestors. His great- great-great-grandparents are buried in a pretty little graveyard here, a steam-powered mill used to sit over there. When he was a little boy, he played at his grandfather's place, a dead ringer for the Loyalist House in Saint John; over here, he raked hay behind a horse team driven by his father, over there.

There are memories - and apples - everywhere.

"We've had such a heavy crop this year that one tree snapped in half,'' Everett says. "It looks like it was cut with a saw. And another one had so many apples on it that before we noticed, the limbs started breaking off."

Carloads of people are arriving at Everett Farm every day now as pickers seek out consummate Cortlands and perfect Paula Reds. There are Bishop Pippins and Dudley Winters and Golden Russets and Honey Crisps and Lobos, too, nearly 20 varieties in all on this historic orchard that dates to 1792.

"It has been very busy. I wouldn't want it to be much busier,'' he says. "I wouldn't dare advertise much more. People are coming and picking apples, and then they are coming back and picking more."

A man with white hair and a white moustache who looks 20 years younger than an octogenarian, Everett is one of eight generations in his family to have worked the farm in Island View. He oversees the sprawling property just east of the Mactaquac Dam with help from his son, Chuck, who is shadowed all day long by a 14-year-old, apple-fed chocolate lab named Cedar.

Other family members, including his wife, Kit, help, too. Kit works in the farm store and bakes a mean apple pie, apple crisp and apple strudel, too. She also makes apple jam and jelly, apple fritters and, well, anything else that can be made with apples.