Perspective

When I walk from the front door without driving anywhere, there is not much nature but privacy hedges and optimized fields with sticks, nets and fleeces making as much sellable food on every squaremeter as possible.
Usually they go and pick the apples when there are many ripe already, but a few fall down very early.
Only sometimes the apples do not get picked at all, when the obligations towards legality and fair payment of pickers seem to high for the farmer, gas storage space gets expensive from high demand and the cider and fruit juice companies pay to badly . But usually most get picked eventually....

Some farmers here sell strawberries and flowers this way and make in the summer weekends some money.
But the selfpicking of things that hang higher is not as popular. People go to farm stores, but expect products in handy carton crates or bags already in there and to be there best always in the same quality, like at the supermarket. Many nice perfect apples go to the gas storage and back to the farmers own little store from there, so the family member selling theproduce has fresh storage apples and pears. Such a gas storage on a tiny scale not for the supermarket chains but little people is not a thing one farmer could ever own and maintain. So there is a huge modern building, the 21st century paralel to feudal tithe barns often the biggest building in the village, all maintained by a robot arm operated from an office with breathable air. Everyone got a own compartment and gets exactly the own apples back. It's like any other storage rental, but pricier for all the energy and technology to it. An other part at many farms goes into homemade premium hard drink to sell. We have much different laws here, they are not moonshiners, all very legal. Farmstores sell usually a wide aray of fine homemade spirits and also some fruits conserved in liquer of the same sort and such goods. There are high taxes if you sell legaly selfmade alcohol in smal comercial contingents, but it needs no fancy storage to pay and homemade from the local farm here is a huge competition to the advertising brands when it comes not to the poor habitual drinkers but some nice stuff to offer after sunday lunch to adult guests and for gift giving. Alternately there are jams, but usually germans are no big fans of apple there. It is more the red berries and stone fruits you cant put into the storage that become jams.
Farmstores selling different things need to fullfill special requirements. For milk products and baked goods apply extra standards the home kitchen of a farm wife can barely meet, so it is rather unusual and a big step to go into selling something like pies elsewhere than at the church or school fundraiser. Juice is of course always transported before selling, the juice press is as much a communal thing as the gas storage. The farmer brings in apples, has the weight recorded, and gets back tetra packs or glass bottles filled with storable sealed juice or already fermented cider. I guess there is some difference in the size of farms where you live and also in the mentality, to get all gear for themselves on a credit and less bureaucratic regulations and suprise tests for enforcements. Anyway, selling the whole harvest to a big company cheaply is way easier than having a farm store in Germany. All farm store people tell you that in conversations and many say if they had known all the trouble before they would not have started. If one has no cute old farmhouse that stands out by a touristic main road and can man the sales room from breakfast time until the evening with someone not payed for idle time just hanging out, a year round farm store is rarely a big success.
We got almost to many farm stores, I know 7 farmer I can reach comfortably on foot from my home that have or had a store. Some closed already again for good. Some became automated. There is a company now selling farmers cooled and coin operated glass tresor systems to pile up and choose the price for the contents of each compartment. Farmer build little insulated huts around the units and check for taking the money out and refilling about twice a day. Some compartments with gas storage fruits, some fine preserves, some seasonal fresh things, no family member sitting in the salesroom all day. Several greater area farms selling works this way now.