Sunday, October 3, 2010

Apples!

We went apple picking yesterday.  I have NO pictures, because I forgot the camera.  So I can’t show you Sim, playing on the toy tractors that the farm wisely provides (in a very muddy area) for kids to play with before or after picking.  Nor can I show you Hannah and Naomi swinging on the tire swing (a real tire swing, much to Hannah’s delight, made with a real tire).  And I can’t show you Hannah and Naomi riding on the old-fashioned see-saw, which was perhaps the cutest thing that they did while out there.

But I can tell you that we had a lot of fun, tried a lot of apples, and came home with a lot of apples.  The trees were dwarf stock, so the kids easily picked, much to their delight.  We had to prevent Sim from trying to pick up the windfalls and eat them, but once he got hold of an apple that he especially liked, that wasn’t too hard. 

The orchard we went to has 120 varieties of apples, 80-90 of which are ripe at the moment.  We did not get to all of them, but we did try a bunch of new ones that we really liked:  Dayton, Spartan, Homestead 2, State Fair (I didn’t care for it, but the others did), Aroma, King.  They also had Braeburn, Fuji, and Gala, which we see at the stores a lot.  We tried some that we didn’t like at all, but didn’t try to remember their names.  Michael found a type that is recommended for making hard cider, so he’s planning his trip back next year to get it while it’s in season.

The weather cooperated quite nicely – it was a beautiful day for being out in an orchard. 

My favorite part was the apple picking, but the kids may have enjoyed the play equipment more.  Or the chickens.  There were lots and lots of chickens in a large pen, and both Naomi and Simeon spent a good deal of time while in the orchard asking about whether we could go see the chickens now.  Humbling that they probably would have had just as much fun if we’d gone to look at chickens and brought an apple along to eat…

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