Apple Season

If you haven't noticed, I've been trying to stock our freezer and pantry with lots of fresh, local produce for winter. Berry season is over, but luckily apple season is here. With that in mind, last Friday we headed east to the Apple Barn. I hesitate to give away my secrets, but hey...

...can I just recommend that if you don't have to go on a weekend, you don't. We made that mistake last year and it was just miserable. There were way too many people to enjoy anything. Parking was a nightmare, the crowds were insane.

This year we went straight from school on a Friday afternoon and the difference was incredible.

Anyway, the first stop was the Mater truck at the entrance to the farm:

ooooh...look at all the pumpkins!

David figuring out how the pumpkin pricer works.

We promised the kids we'd come back and play just as soon as we'd picked our apples. So we grabbed a bag and a wagon and headed to the orchard to see what was ready for picking.

There were three varieties ready and of the three, we picked mostly Honeycrisp.


Then we headed back up to the bouncy cushion.

And the crazy slides. Scary?

I guess they weren't that bad. He loved them.

Lizzie really liked the bouncy cushion. (by the way, have I mentioned on here that Elisabeth decided that she doesn't want to be called Tink any more? Or Ellie? Or Libby? Or anything except Lizzie? And she stipulated that it has to be LizzIE, not Lizzy. I think it suits her.)

The kids finally tired of the bouncer and so we moved to the petting zoo.

David loved the bunnies. In fact, I couldn't get him out of there!



Unfortunately, my camera is still having light issues. Argh. But you get the gist.

Good times. I've processed about half the apples. Frozen bags of apple slices, made two different kinds of apple sauce (plain and blueberry apple) and made three loaves of apple bread. Yum. Now I just have to decide whether to make more apple sauce or whether to make muffins with the rest...