When I lived in the Wild West I always missed my fall trips to the orchard. We never seemed to have anything like that at all- probably because where I lived skipped the season of fall entirely and went straight from summer to snow blizzards. Anyway...
Now that I've moved back to Civilization, I was pretty excited to go again. And it was a nice time. And just as I remembered it.
One thing I especially like is that every type of apple is available to taste. A visitor can get a knife and cut a slice off a "sample" apple. Each variety is labeled as to the flavor and use for that particular type of apple, as you can see from the picture on the left. You can read the card and if it sounds like it's worth a taste, you can cut a slice off of the apple in the plastic container. We bought a good cooking apple, that's also sweet enough to be a good eating apple called a Spartan. I'm going to make dumplings to freeze and put up some applesauce out of those. The day I was there an amateur brass band was playing, which was nice. A guy was making cider the old fashioned way and letting people have a taste. Oh, one thing had been updated: the wagon rides. They used to be on a big old hay wagon pulled by a horse. Now, it's a low, flatbed trailer lined with bench seats and pulled by a John Deere tractor. There's also no corn maze this year; the field is a bean field this time.
I also like that there is more for sale than just bags of apples or pumpkins. There are also homemade cider, caramel apples, and apple butter- all made at the orchard from their fruits. Baked goods like pumpkin or apple pies, dumplings, and cobblers can be found as well a fresh honey made from the bees at their orchard as well.
Something else the orchard is offering this year is a little arts and crafts area. Local vendors can set up tents to sell their wares, but it's cannot be flea market junk, but craft type of things. Also a local high school has a little tent set up at the edge of the parking area where they make and sell apple fritters for a quarter. They make them in a kettle over a fire pit- very awesome.
It was a fun day and I hope to go back again in two weeks when the leaves have a chance to turn colors a little more. I'm also going to go for a wagon ride this time and maybe brave the pumpkin patch (I didn't last time because I was wearing flip-flops. Flip-flops are not pumpkin patch appropriate footwear- take my word for it.)
It's nice to have an autumn and find fall activities that I've missed! This is just one of many! This weekend I get to attend a REENACTMENT as a guest, not a participant this time! (Can we say "history nerd"?) I'm also going to a chili cook off festival and an arts/ crafts hobby show, all over the next few weeks. And I've been taking pictures so if you're interested in seeing some of the autumn whereabouts, check out my photo blog!
Enjoying the season change,
Maggie
