ARCADIA, N.Y. — The big black Ford Explorer rumbled down the gravel road on Wednesday and came to a stop. Out climbed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who started walking toward an orchard, alongside local farmers.
The group paused in front of a Ginger Gold apple tree, its branches bent and twisted, its apples bruised. “It’s so sad,” said Mrs. Clinton, turning to the farmers.
The event at Gary and Barb Wells’s farm on Fairville Maple Ridge Road was about as homespun as they come for United States senators.
After a storm last month brought hail the size of silver dollars, which shredded trees for miles, a fruit grower who heads the local farm bureau sent an e-mail message to Mrs. Clinton asking for help. Days ago, her office sent word that she was coming.
The visit captured another challenging transition for a woman who has been through many of them. A month ago, she was a presidential candidate, discussing her plans for ending the war in Iraq and establishing universal health care. On Wednesday she was promising the apple, strawberry and peach growers that she would fight for federal aid to cover the losses from the damaged crops.
Phil Wagner, a cherry and apple grower — and a Republican — who sent the message to Mrs. Clinton said that the moment was bittersweet.
“I told her, ‘I’m sorry you lost your presidential campaign, but I missed my senator,’ ” Mr. Wagner said. “It’s saddening, because I was looking forward to our first female president. Us guys have mucked it up for a pretty long time. But I’m glad we have her back.”
It seemed fitting that Mrs. Clinton’s first swing through her home state after she ended her campaign on June 7 would be upstate, in a region that unexpectedly connected with her in 1999 when she was a first lady who was considering asking New Yorkers to send her to the Senate.
Her visit stirred much interest throughout the village of Newark, in southern Arcadia, a town 36 miles southeast of Rochester. Mr. Wagner spent much of the morning shooing away residents from the meeting.
They came in their cars with their cameras, hoping for a glimpse. Most politely drove off, though one woman became so angry that she shouted, “Good! I’m glad I didn’t vote for her!” from her car.
“I feel bad. People really want to see her,” Mr. Wagner said.
If the visit was a letdown after months in the limelight. Mrs. Clinton didn’t let on. She and the growers sat on folding chairs under a newly pitched tent, and she offered them her trademark nod again and again.
“This is probably the biggest hailstorm that hit New York,” Ted Furber told the senator about the mid-June turbulence that ravaged the area.
Mr. Furber, one of the owners of Cherry Lawn Farms nearby, had planned to take the day off to go boating but changed his plans when he heard Mrs. Clinton was coming to town.
Mrs. Clinton leaned forward to hear more. “Can you harvest with that kind of challenge?” she asked at one point.
Mrs. Clinton avoided talk of her presidential campaign at that stop, apart from mentioning that she had been a booster of the state’s apple industry while on the road.
“I’ve gone all over this country for 17 months talking about New York agriculture,” she said, adding that she keeps a bowl of New York apples on her desk.
Mrs. Clinton’s day included six stops, beginning at City Hall Commons in Syracuse, where she and the mayor were given a briefing by local business executives about alternative energy. It ended in Buffalo, with a ribbon-cutting to mark the restoration of the Erie Canal Harbor, and a tour of artists’ space.
She spent about 30 minutes at a farm and market in Newark, a heavily Republican village of 10,000 people, and then she was off to another orchard in nearby Geneva, a rural community of about 13,000.
There, about 400 people burst into sustained applause and chants of “Hillary! Hillary!”’ when she arrived at Red Jacket Orchards, a fruit farm that the same family has run for three generations.
Mrs. Clinton told the crowd about the devastation that the Newark farmers had described. “Some suffered complete losses, some less than that,” she said, adding that she remembered being there three years ago “and seeing the trees heavy with fruit.”
While many in the crowd said that Mrs. Clinton’s presence was reassuring, given the region’s urgent need for aid, others wondered whether the visit might also help her begin to get over her own loss.
Stu Einstein, the mayor of Geneva, described it as a homecoming for Mrs. Clinton, who carried Geneva in her re-election bid in 2006. He said the community felt a special connection to her.
“This is probably very therapeutic for her, to throw herself back into her Senate work,” he said.
Mr. Einstein said that he, too, was surprised by her visit, having learned of it only on Tuesday, when her Rochester office said she was on her way.
Several people, including Tom Ferraro, who heads a regional food bank that runs a farm in the area, said that they were especially struck by what they described as Mrs. Clinton’s resilience.
Mr. Ferraro is a Republican, but he traveled to Iowa earlier this year to campaign in rural communities on behalf of Mrs. Clinton.
After watching her greet the crowd in Geneva, he said she seemed to be taking the loss better than many of her supporters.
He showed up with a basket of cucumbers and other vegetables to present to Mrs. Clinton.
“I think she is amazing,” he said. “I don’t know how many people have the chutzpah to get back in the saddle so quickly. You’ve got to get back in the saddle after you fall. But this was quick.”
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