To the Orchard We Went

Our congregation has a yearly tradition going apple picking at a local orchard, Honey Pot Hill.  We were eager to join in on the fun a week ago Saturday!  After a rough start to the morning (a certain child who shall remain nameless had turned on one of the over-the-door lights in the car earlier in the week, which completely drained our brand new battery and we had to find someone to jump us off again), we drove through some beautiful New England scenery to meet our friends at the orchard.

We decided to purchase the "big" bag which was supposed to hold about 20 lbs of apples.  But we both were a little underwhelmed about how big the "big" bag seemed.  But then we started picking and realized that we would have quite enough apples to take home.

We picked McIntosh and Gala apples on this row of mature trees.  I never realized that apple trees grew so squat to the ground!  I had told Nathan the week before that if he couldn't reach the trees maybe Daddy would let him sit on his shoulders to pick apples.  So he told Brian on the way to the orchard that he was planning on standing on his head to reach the apple in the trees.  Turns out, thankfully, that drastic action was not required.

Brian was diligent in his taste-testing to make sure the apple trees we decided to pick from had good genes!

When we met up with our friends at entrance to the orchard, Sarah seemed fussy and really clingy, then she finally told me she wanted to "eat, eat".  I was bummed because I had left her snack in the car since the signs asked people to not take backpacks into the orchard.  But as soon as we got into the orchard and got an apple in Sarah's hand, I realized how ridiculous my thought process was!  It didn't even occur to me that the perfect snack for her was right at our fingertips!

I could not believe how much of a hit the apples were with the kids.  Before this past week, I've never been one to grab and apple and eat it whole, and I'm sure that neither child has ever eaten an apple unsliced.  But this trip to the orchard made a convert out of all three of us!  They probably ate 3 to 4 apples A PIECE by the time that we got home!  That's about what I ate and I know Brian had even more.

But Nathan especially was not content to pick apples from the ground, he kept badgering Brian until we got a ladder for him to climb.  Sarah, of course, was just as eager as her brother to get up on the ladder.

When we had filled our bags almost full, we started wandering in the direction of the food and fortunately stumbled upon a row of Honeycrisp trees!  They looked pretty picked over but Brian was able find enough to fill our bag to practically overflowing. I assume these trees are pretty young because they are drastically different looking then (what I assume are) the old mature trees, but I was surprised at how much fruit even these tiny trees could produce!
 

We were also picking with the kids' favorite friends from church, eight year old twins M and S.  Their family hosts small groups on Sunday evenings and both kids are pretty obsessed with them.  Thankfully, both M and S are really sweet to Nathan and Sarah!

We finally made it to the farm store, and while Brian bought us some apple cider doughnuts and hot dogs for lunch (eaten in that order), the kids and I looked at some bunnies and then "drove" this old tractor. 

The apple cider doughnuts were AMAZING.  People around here kept talking about how good they were, but since I had never heard of them before I though they couldn't be that good.  But I was definitely wrong!  I was surprised when I tried my first one, they aren't strongly apple flavored like I imagine, but were light and subtly spiced and just delectable.  Brian and I agreed that the first half-dozen our family polished off wasn't quite enough so we got another half-dozen to take home.  Unfortunately they don't taste near as good the next day.  But the caramel apple that we also bought lasted just perfectly!

After hanging out at the farm store for quite a while with our church friends, people began drifting off and back home for the day.  We had paid for hayride tickets for the family so convinced our friends J and K to ride back with us to the car.  J also happens to be one of Nathan's favorite people from church and actually that day on the way home Sarah said his name for the first time.  So now they both talk about him quite a bit!

While J and K got off the hayride when we made it around to the parking area, we decided to stay on and ride one more circuit around the orchard.  Nathan and Sarah apparently were hungry again so they started on apple numbers 15 and 39 (or something like that).

The big excitement of the hayride was when our driver cut the corner a little too close to a loading ramp and tore off one of the long 2x4 railings.  It took quite a bit of maneuvering to extract the board from under the tractor and to get the wagon going the right direction again.  Nathan was just fascinated by the whole event - the whole way home Nathan would be sitting quietly thinking, then ask us again about why the man hit the board and how where they going to fix it and anything else he could think of.

We got home and the whole family took a round of late naps, then I was confrunted with this sight:

I was still full of apples from that morning and wondered how in the world were we going to consume all those apples.  Turns out I shouldn't have been worried because we have devoured most of the apples in just 10 days!  I made apple bread, crockpot applesauce, applesauce bars with cream cheese icing, apple pancakes and apple crisp, AND we've been eating 3-4 apples a day just plain.

In fact, yesterday when the 20 quart plastic tote holding the apples was almost empty, and I transferred the remaining apples to a large bowl I thought "we're running out of apples!"  And even more crazy, I bought another almost 5 lbs of Cortland apples at the grocery store today!  Cortlands were one of the varieties at the orchard that I'd never heard of; we tried them but didn't end up picking any.  I did overheard another picker at the orchard tell a friend that Cortland apples were supposed to make the best apple pie, and since we were almost "out" of apples and I haven't made a pie yet I figured I should stock up!