Quick Trip to the Orchard

Another quick visit to Erie Orchard for a second, big bag full of golden delicious apples.  This time, just my boy and me.  It was a gorgeous fall day and many of the apple varieties were already picked over, but our favorites were still plentiful.

Will was an awesome picking partner.  He selected the best trees, climbed the ladder and handed them down to me.

For some reason, Will had it in his head that he wanted to eat a red delicious apple while we were there.  So we looked and looked and it seemed those trees were almost completely picked over.  I asked him:  "Maybe we can find another variety.  Did you just want it to be red?"  And he said:  "And DELICIOUS!"  Haha!  And then miraculously, the very next tree had exactly ONE perfect looking red delicious apple just waiting for little hands to pluck and eat it.

Easy to please. 

Quick stop at the play area on the way out. 

And a quick thumbs DOWN to Ford products.  Hahahaha!!  According to Will & Craig, we're Chevy people. 

Apple Pickin' at Erie Orchard

Another beautiful fall weekend and an outing to the apple orchard for the season's first apple harvest.  We picked right around 1/4 bushel of golden delicious and the kids each ate a red delicious mid-picking.  Yum... the taste of fall!

We ate a packed lunch in the back of the Jeep and the kids waved and yelled to the hay ride wagons that passed by.  Then later we grabbed a fresh apple donut from the bakery in the store. 

Wrapping up with some playground time on our way out. 

We LOVE Erie Orchard!

A Few Randoms

Weekend art work.  Somehow, painting turned into finger painting...

A special date with just my boy.  A trip to the zoo with two things on the agenda:  ride the train and ride the carousel.  We accomplished both of those and then he was ready to go!  Haha!  And it turned out to be a good thing because it started pouring as soon as we got in the car.  So we stopped for donuts at the bakery down the road and headed home.

When I first saw this little booger, I thought "Oh my gosh! I have to get a picture to show the kids!"  And also that this must be our garden visitor this year, since we have one every year.  Well!  Little did I know, this is not a catterpillar of any kind.  It's some sort of tomato "worm" thing.  It doesn't get into the tomatoes themselves (although it does eat some of them, leaving wide, gaping wedges missing), but rather it eats almost all the foliage from the plant itself so that the tomatoes have little tools to reach the nutrients from the sun.  I could have gotten him out of there, had I known!  Instead, little by little, the leaves disappeared and I was left with bare branches sticking up like twigs.  :(  We still have plenty of tomatoes, but they're just not as abundant as years past.  P.S. - the head of this thing is at the bottom.  It totally grosses me out now.

A second trip out to pick blueberries.  And it's still unreal to me that we wore long sleeves and pants!  That's just unheard of for blueberry season!  Usually, we are dripping with sweat by the end of picking.

Eshleman Cherries

Straight from basketball camp, I took the kids out to Clyde, Ohio to Eshleman Fruit Farm for some cherry picking!

Their orchard is vast and well organized.  They give directions out to the cherry trees by way of "road names" through their orchard.  (Take Main to Third, take a right, etc.)  The kids loved that. 

They also loved that I let them unbuckle and stick their heads out the window as we drove the grassy orchard "roads".

We parked next to the row of sweet cherries where we were instructed to pick and got started.  No ladders allowed, but many of the branches are low enough for kids to reach and they were both enthusiastic pickers!  Mostly for their own eating benefit again, but still.  ;)

This year, we brought along our new cherry/olive pitter so the kids could pit their own cherries before eating.  Will has become adept at separating and spitting out the pits in his mouth, but he also likes the novelty of using the pitter.  Probably because it sorta' looks like a gun.  Boys...

The trees were loaded!  And picking was super easy!

My fave of the day:

And this one's pretty darn cute too.  :)

I packed a picnic lunch with lots of wet wipes and ice water.  I know my kids well and we do NOT leave home without water bottles.  That would be disastrous.  But this was also a hot day... after camp... and during lunch time.  So we came prepared.  I put out the blanket and lunches and they chilled in the shade while I finished picking.  We had the place to ourselves!

On the way back up to the barn where we were to check out, I let the kids sit in the back of the Jeep with the window open.  Another novelty.  :)

My little helpers and I picked 13# of sweet cherries this morning!  Another adventurous u-pick under our belt!