Today, I dropped the kids off at school, and went out to Farmer John’s to pick apples with my friends Taryn and Jeana. The morning was warm, the apples were ripe, and we filled our baskets for applesauce-making and storing in the pantry. I cannot describe to you how wonderful an apple picked fresh off the tree tastes. It makes me never, ever want to eat a store-bought apple in the middle of winter again. I know the apples in our pantry will start to lose some of their deliciousness by then as well, but right now I’m just enjoying the fresh crunchiness of it all. I’m a fresh, crunchy sort of mamma.
I’m used to doing a lot of gleaning off of old, unruly trees that you have to climb or use a fruit picking implement on a long stick to harvest. Going to a real farm where the trees were pruned and grew fruit down where we could reach it was a real treat. It all felt so easy!
Apple picking is always a morning well spent. Chatting, picking, and eating apples on an organic farm are all good ways to start out the day.
Here’s the haul. We also picked some elderberries off of a giant old elderberry tree (yes, it was really a tree). Farmer John was generous with his u-pick pricing, which we all appreciated tremendously, since Taryn picked a lot of saucing apples!
One thing I love about this time of year is all the abundant, ripe fruit growing all around us, and how it fills the baskets around the house. When anyone gets hungry, they can always reach for something good.
How wonderful and how lucky to have such friends!
Warm wishes, Tonya
beautiful photos. Fresh fruit is so photogenic 🙂 Where is Farmer John's? (I live in Florence).
Hi Abby! Farmer John's is in Coburg, but he doesn't have an official u-pick operation. Our Waldorf school goes out there for all the Preschool and Kindergarten field trips and this year I went out to get bamboo for a class project, and he let us u-pick since we were there. If you are looking for U-picks within a reasonable drive from Florence, there is the Locally Grown guide (http://www.lanefood.org/locally-grown.php) which they might have at the co-op or the health food store out there. It's got all the good contacts for organic u-pick farms around Lane County. Happy picking!
Beautiful pictures and post. We have been busy with apples as well, enjoying lots of wild apples and canning apple sauce.
i gave you a blog award on my site! Stop by to claim it!! 🙂
http://theenchantedtree.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the blog award, Tree! I am pretty swamped right now with harvesting and behind on blogging, but I will claim it and pass it along as soon as I can!