It's a balmy 19 degrees outside today and while I'm much more a fan of Winter than Summer, my favorite season is Fall, by far. Since I took a hiatus from blogging during this past Fall, I'm here to recap a little side trip that the family & I took this past October.
As the girls are getting bigger, it amuses me what things they choose to focus their excitement on. Little A decided that her 1 goal in life to accomplish was picking an apple from an apple tree. And since I'm all about helping my kids meet their goals, it was now my mission to find an apple orchard within reasonable distance of my house. Little did I know that the real challenge was going to be finding an orchard that 1) let's you go out and pick from the trees & 2) actually had apples left on trees to pick. After many internet searches and even more phone calls, I found a winner about 40 minutes away!
One breezy October afternoon, we hopped in the car and headed up to our orchard choice in Dunlap, TN. After many "are we there yet" comments, we finally arrived and waited even more. This is a small family orchard and since we were coming at the tail end of the season, the hours were pretty lax.
As the girls are getting bigger, it amuses me what things they choose to focus their excitement on. Little A decided that her 1 goal in life to accomplish was picking an apple from an apple tree. And since I'm all about helping my kids meet their goals, it was now my mission to find an apple orchard within reasonable distance of my house. Little did I know that the real challenge was going to be finding an orchard that 1) let's you go out and pick from the trees & 2) actually had apples left on trees to pick. After many internet searches and even more phone calls, I found a winner about 40 minutes away!
One breezy October afternoon, we hopped in the car and headed up to our orchard choice in Dunlap, TN. After many "are we there yet" comments, we finally arrived and waited even more. This is a small family orchard and since we were coming at the tail end of the season, the hours were pretty lax.
The girls weren't thrilled about having to wait, but they wasted no time picking apples off the ground around the bare trees that we could see.
The views on the property were gorgeous. This picture doesn't do it justice.
Finally, one of the sons arrived with his granddaughter and welcomed us. We explained our mission and he was sympathetic. He told us that most of his trees had either already been picked or recent storms had knocked the fruit from the branches. He only had 1 part of the grove that still had fruit, but the apples were very tough.
The girls couldn't care less.
Little A was thrilled as she finally picked an apple from the tree
Big A was equally excited
I think this variety of apple is called an Arkansas Black.
The skin is very dark, as you can see, and extremely tough. I think these are supposed to be good for baking.
After the excitement of picking apples from the trees, we went up to the onsite store and saw the apples for sale. We all picked some of our favorites, as well as some other goodies and then made our way back home.
We had a nice time, but this year, we'll definitely be getting to the orchard in September rather than waiting for late October.
