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| Kelsey at Apple Picking Last Year |
Recently Jay and I took his grandchildren Amanda and Benjamin to Holmberg Orchards for our annual apple picking day. Tyler and Kelsey used to go, but now they seemed to have "aged out" on the tradition. When Kelsey stated that she didn't want to go because she hated apple picking, I recalled that all the pictures I have of her last year were of her texting. So I agreed it would be grandchildren only.
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| Jay and Ben on the tractor ride up the hill |
Ben (age 4) and Amanda (age 7) have been asking to go for months so the anticipation is great. I finally had a weekend where I wasn't away at a cat show. Apple picking entails a tractor ride to the top of the orchard and conducting a taste test on the fruit.
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| Try Before You Buy |
One of us tastes an apple and declares whether or not that type was worth picking. If not, the apple is tossed to the ground with a yuck. Although it seemed none of the apples were determined to be a clear winner, we still managed to fill up three bags with apples and one with pears.
Loaded up with fruit, we hiked back down the hill and picked out pumpkins. This is a big deal as Ben is emotionally attached to pumpkins and even slept with last year's choice in his bed. It took two trips to the car to get all our apples, pears and pumpkins loaded up.
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| Amanda demonstrates the Apple-Corer-Pealer-Slicer |
Headed home with 4 bags of fruit and a pumpkin and small gourd for each child, I realized we had a lot of apples to eat. Luckily, this year I was prepared with my new Apple, Corer, Peeler, Slicer tool bought online (thank you Diana for the suggestion). In previous years, I either got stuck preparing all the apples to cook myself or the apples rotted in the fridge before they could all be eaten.
With my toy, everyone wanted to help and we even got two large baggies complete with apple pie ingredients to freeze for later. Apple picking itself took about an hour and we spent about 2 hours slicing our harvest. The kids declared the whole day to be a winner.
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| The resulting Apple Slinky |
When Kelsey stated that she didn't want to go because she hated apple picking, I recalled that all the pictures I have of her last year were of her texting.
ReplyDeleteAh the joys of modern, teenaged life. I remember similar sights of Kelsey at the beach. You could probably take that picture and drop in a number of other backdrops.
We used to do a long trip to the somewhat local Buckelew Farms for pumpkins until our boy Weston joined the UMYF, who sell pumpkins as a fund-raiser every year. Now we have to buy our pumpkins there, which is not quite the same as going into the pumpkin patch and picking out your favorites.
Vienna! Where is the Blog entry on Vienna? I have been waiting for pictures of Viennese cats.