DE PERE, Wis. (WFRV) - Apple orchard workers are stunned by the early arrival of apple picking season, as the fruit has matured and ripened weeks in advance. “With the early days that we had and the hot days, the fruit has been maturing a lot quicker," Steve Gonnering, owner of Misty Ridge Orchard, said. “We’re picking a lot of the varieties that we picked in mid-October; we’re picking them now already. The whole orchard was ripe all at the same time, basically.” Expansion sees 34 northeast Wisconsin high schools participating in Musical Theater Program The early and wet spring and warm fall are the biggest factors in Gonnering's opinion that the season has arrived early. “Beautiful crop. It’s just that everything is coming in so quickly as far as ripening goes," he said. “They sized out well. We got plenty of rain for these apples to size out, so between the rain and the heat, it’s really everything that apples like.” He says it is something that he and other orchard workers have never seen before and could not have predicted. “We’re scrambling to make more room in our coolers to get the apples in the cooler, off the trees, get them picked," he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this before, and I’ve talked to other orchards that have been around for many years, and they haven’t experienced anything like this before either.” Now, Gonnering and his small crew have 5,000 trees to pick within the next few weeks. Three Wisconsin wholesale dealers have licenses revoked for violating state law “We have a new variety that usually comes in every week from when we start picking. This year, with the weather, the later varieties are coming in a lot quicker," he said. “Snow sweets, Evercrisp, Ludicrisp, Rosalies, Empires, these are later apples a lot of times. We have them now. We’re going to be selling them now.” While Misty Ridge and many other orchards are open through the end of October, the next two weeks will offer the greatest variety of apples.