pickin' apples

Last weekend, we took advantage of a beautiful day and took the kids to a local apple orchard. When we got there, there were signs posted explaining that the orchard had been the victim of a hail storm, but that there were still lots of good apples to be picked- some of them just had "dents". I wasn't really sure what to expect...I know what hail can do to a car, but hadn't ever thought about what would happen to a juicy piece of fruit during a good old fashioned hail storm. Now I know.

Now maybe this is normal for mid-October, and maybe it's the result of the hail storm, but there were TONS of apples on the ground, and most of the apples still clinging to the branches had gaping holes in them. After 15 minutes of telling the kids to leave the rotten apples on the ground, and searching for good apples still on the trees, we had 4- yes, F-O-U-R apples in our basket. There were lots of other families experiencing the same dilemma- lots of kids, not so many good apples. But we eventually found a tree that had been overlooked by the masses and spared from the storm, and we wound up with about 10 pounds of tasty Honeycrisp apples to take home.

As part of the orchard experience, we also went for a hayride, and the kids had a blast playing in/on a huge pile of hay and wandering through the mini-maze. We all had a great time, and the kids are looking forward to inviting Grandpa and Grandma to join us next year!