Apples, Apples, Apples

Today, the kids and I went with Samuel and Sarah to J&A Orchard. It was my first time at an apple orchard and I felt like a little kid in a candy store. The orchard is owned by Jim and Alice, who are an older couple - the nicest people ever! They gave us our 5 gallon buckets and the kids and I took off into the trees laden with tons of apples. At first Ian wanted to pick them up off the ground. He picked up one of the first ones and said 'Ball'. I said 'No, Apple'. Pick it off the tree. From then on he was good and understood what to do. Both kids went at it like old pros picking apples off the trees. Jim said we could taste the apples to make sure we picked what we wanted. They had about 10 varieties to choose from. We just picked a hodge-podge of everything. Samuel ate 3 apples! Sarah tasted about 6 apples. My kids - zero. But, I'll tell you, I never realized how delicious apples taste when you pick them right off the tree and take a huge bite - yum!

The orchard bordered some pasture with cows, so of course, we had to take the cow detour and take their picture. Then Payton wanted to take pictures of the apples all by herself. I'm always a little leery of her taking, but surprisingly she takes very good care of it. So, I will post her collection of pictures soon.

After we had picked all our apples, we had a nice picnic lunch in the orchard and headed home.

We ended up picking a bushel of apples - that's 2 - 5 gallon buckets full of apples. I weighed the apples on our bathroom scale when we got home and I think we have close to 35-40 lbs of apples :)

I made applesauce for the first time tonight and it was pretty good. Scott didn't like the hint of cinnamon so much, but for someone who doesn't really care for applesauce, I thought it was pretty good. I'm planning BIG things for the apples and am sooooo excited. Applesauce, apple cake, apple muffins, apple crisp, apple pie, baked apples, Waldorf salad, chicken salad with apples; the possibilities are endless. I'll probably cut some up as well and freeze them. My parents are coming on Tuesday, so I've already prepared them for being inundated with apples.