Apple Pickin'

We have been trying to make it to an apple orchard for several weeks and today we finally made it. One of the many advantages to living in the northeast is being able to drive through the beautiful countryside dressed in fall colors that will take your breath away. Add to that the opportunity to pick apples off a tree instead of off a stack in the produce department and it makes for an amazing day. Getting to the orchard was simple. We fell in love with almost every house we saw as we drove through the villages leading up to it.

Once there, we purchased a bag

for the apples and were given an apple picker to use. Now I am not a big lover of apples, but it broke my heart to see how many apples lay on the ground rotting. I can only imagine how many homeless and hungry children and adults could have feasted off the wasted fruit that lay on the ground. Alivia immediately went to work gathering apples off the ground. It's amazing how many apples a 13 month on a mission can carry. While Erin and I took turns using the picker, Alivia chose two perfectly ripe apples to munch on. I'm not sure what kind of apples we were picking, but one variety was small and dark red and so sweet and juicy that even I had to admit they were damn good. There were some that were a little larger that were not quite as red and some large red and yellow ones.

After about an hour, we were getting cold and tired so we wandered back down the hill and returned to the barn where we bought some old fashioned candy sticks, pumpkin muffins and canned dilly beans. It was a really fun day and we made a great memory.