Apple picking

We went upstate to go apple picking this weekend. Last year's outing was fun, but not familiar. This year, I wanted the drive up to the Catskills and soak in the fall foliage, the stuff of my childhood.

My sister, Mike and my mom met us at a great orchard. Nothing fancy (no HAY RIDES! no CORN MAZES! no TONS of STUFF to BUY!) and in fact when we got there, it was cloudy, chilly, and so quiet and dilapidated in appearance that I wondered if we were wandering into a Stephen King story :-)



We picked Cortlands, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious and are pretty sure we got some Winesaps in there, too. I had no idea that Red Delicious apples, picked fresh off a tree taste almost like a completely different apple. Absolutely...delicious! This orchard used to be organic, but is now a low spray one. I think they might be amongst the cadre of small farmers who are fed up with/can't economically deal with the increasing cost and bureaucracy of being certified organic.


We met this fuzzy critter on our way out of the orchard. The kids and I could have spent the rest of the afternoon with him. He was very interested in moving along, not interested in half eaten apple cores...



We drove to a nearby college town to a park that Sandy and Mike knew about. They love this region and come up often to hike, lunch and stroll. We had a typical family picnic with tons of yummy food: various onigiri (rice balls), a cold rice pasta with zucchini and tomato, chicken hotdogs, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, tamagoyaki (Kinder's favorite kind of eggs), and chips.

The kids played with various permutations of adults, it was a gorgeous autumn afternoon.

And the cherry on top was getting to see Ben after nearly ten years of not. He is now teaching at this univerity and he joined us for lunch and play. He took us on a tour of campus and we spent a few hours catching up and soaking each other in again.

Lovely.