Apple Picking

Every year we go apple picking as a family; it's one of the things I love best about Fall in Virginia. This year Drew has been working like a madman (especially as of late with his trial going on), so I thought our best chance of going was me, alone with the girls. There's a man in our ward who owns an orchard up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and every year he lets the ward members come on Labor Day and pick apples for free.

So I "Mann-ed up" and drove the 1 1/2 hours over there to go apple picking alone with the girls. Thankfully our friends joined us, which made the outing fun (but not quite up for repeating next year...more to follow). Besides being able to drive through absolutely beautiful countryside, we also drove through Amish Country, which was pretty awesome (picture 2, no make that 3, girls with their mouths wide open, staring for 1/2 hour straight at the bearded farmers plowing their fields in their black overalls, with their wives hanging laundry on the line in their yards, and little horse-drawn buggies trying to keep pace beside us on the road). Addison has never seen so many "hoseys" in her short life and thoroughly amused.

And the apple picking...great photo-op, not-so-great apple-picking-op. 

 See that apple? That was a beautiful, long-looked for prize. This orchard was au-natural, no pesticides, no fertilizer, no nothin'.  Organic to the max, baby. Fortunately for apple sauce making, blemished apples are more-than-ok. We were in luck.

 One preggo mama with her two good sports. They even steered clear of the poison ivy patches that were running rampant throughout the orchard.

 Makenna catching a ride back to the house with Mark and friend Mason.

I think next year we'll probably just spring for paying the money to pick apples at our normal orchard, where they're still organic, but much bigger and much less blemished. Call us apple snobs if you will. However, we did get 5 quarts of delicious homemade apple sauce out of our pickings, which the girls are devouring.