This afternoon, Matt, Michael, and I drove to Burnham's Orchards for our annual apple picking. Since we moved to Vermilion nine years ago, picking apples at the orchard has become a family tradition.
I remember when Michael was no bigger than the goofy looking red apple. He always ran up to the apple sign to see how much he had grown since the previous year. Boy times have changed. This year I practically begged him to stand next to the apple. Being 13 he thinks this is so uncool.
Our next stop on our visit was to purchase the makings of a scarecrow. Michael picked out jeans, a blue and red flannel shirt, and a burlap bag with a happy face painted on the front. We took our materials to the stuffing station where we tied off the legs and arms before filling them with straw. We even received a birth certificate for our scarecrow. The scarecrow enjoyed riding around in the wagon Michael pulled behind him.
From the scarecrow station we visited the bees. I think it would be lovely to have a bee hive in my backyard. There are so few honey bees around these days. We have tons of flowers in our flower beds. I think bees would love to live in our yard. I wonder how difficult it would be to keep them. I purchased a half gallon of honey. Did you know that you can freeze honey? The woman told me that I could keep the large container in the freezer and take it out to refill my small container as I needed it. Learned something new today.
Michael pulled the wagon with the honey and the scarecrow towards the apple trees. We picked Golden Delicious, Johnathons, and Golden Johnathons. Michael was the first to eat an apple right from the tree. Matt and I followed suit. I picked my apple and shined it up with my shirt. The apple was crisp and sweet - delicious.
Our next stop was the pumpkins. Well we side tracked to take a picture with the John Deer tractor for Boppa. Matt and Michael selected some small pumpkins for decorations while I purchased the Indian corn and apple cider. The boys also decided that we needed corn stalks and a bale of straw. We seriously need a TRUCK. We had to put the back seats down to fit the straw bale and corn stalks.
When we returned home Michael and I set up our scarecrow, straw bale, pumpkins, mums, and corn stalks in the front yard. Matt went in the house to fix dinner, chicken and noodles - yum.
After dinner I baked my first apple pie. I'm not too crazy about the crust. It was one of those already made pie crusts. I think it was a little dry. We just finished having a piece of pie with vanilla ice cream. Delicious.
What a nice fall day.
Hugs,
HopeAnn
