an apple a day

We don’t have apple orchards where I come from. At least, not as far as I know. I’d heard that apple picking was big in the Northeast, and it’s on my Boston list, so imagine my delight when I discovered that a group from our church goes every year. This past Saturday, a dozen or so of us headed out to Honey Pot Hill Orchards, and we had a fabulous time.

I’d never been to an apple orchard before, and I quickly discovered that my perception of how apple trees look has been shaped by storybooks (and The Wizard of Oz, as my friend Shanna added). I was expecting tall trees with neat, high, rounded clumps of branches, not the gnarled, rambling glory we really saw:

Just feast your eyes on that – dozens of branches loaded with fruit, some of them bent to the ground because they’re so weighed down. We filled a “medium” bag with apples – probably 8 or 9 pounds – and we didn’t even make a dent in the fruit of one tree.

We wandered the rows, munching apples and talking, marveling at the abundance of fruit and the charm of the rambling, untidy trees. We picked several varieties – Empire, Cortland, McIntosh – and began dreaming about the pies and crisps and other dishes we’d make.

Jeremiah braved a ladder to reach the higher fruit:

And we all snacked on a few apples, of course:

I especially love this photo – Shanna is posing obligingly, Daniel is talking (of course) and neither he nor Jeremiah are paying attention:

Besides picking apples, you can visit the farm animals (goats, bunnies, chickens and three sort-of-little pigs), go on a hayride, eat hot dogs fresh off the grill and buy cider, jams and apple butter to take home. Daniel generously shared his apple butter – we all dipped animal crackers in it, and oh my, it was delicious. (This is when it helps to have a pair of four-year-olds along.) I bought a half-gallon of cider, which tastes wonderful both cold and hot. It’s already half gone. And I have big plans for various apple dishes – apple crisp, apple pie, apple cake and more…

If you’re anywhere near an orchard, I recommend this as a delicious way to spend a Saturday. As long as we’re in New England, this will be a fall tradition. Yum.