After our yearly apple – picking outing yesterday we should certainly have an apple a day for quite awhile!

Although we try to make it out to pick every fruit of the season – cherries, strawberries, peaches – our favorite “not to be missed” fruit to pick is apples.  It’s something to do with the changing of the leaves and the weather and how we look forward to months of apple pies, apple sauce, apple butter and more.

This weekend was perfect because there was a definite chill in the air and it was over cast – very fall – like.

Three types of apples were ready to pick: Jonagold, Golden Delicious, and Red Delicious.  I’ll admit – none of these are my favorite.  But, I’ll head back in a few weeks when the Winesaps are ready and pick my own little stash.

The orchard was pretty crowded and the air was full of the scent of fresh cider donuts and the sound of apples falling to the ground.  There were lots of fallen apples.

I know the people that run the orchard go through and collect these later for some use (cider?  dunno) but seeing them all there made me wish I could collect a bunch to take to my goats and llama – they love apples!  I also imagine that the pigs over at Juniper Moon Farm would be equally happy to have them.

The orchard we go to every year is on a mountain – top and the views are stunning.  Of course, the day we went was overcast so it had less of the wow – factor.

Oona and Neve wanted to bite into those apples right now but we made them wait until we could go home and wash them.

And of course we went for the donuts – you can’t not get some after smelling them the whole while.

I love the country store there – and I wish my larder looked like this!

The pumpkins were also sorely tempting but we decided it’s still a bit early to be bringing those home.

At the end of our trip we had over 60 lbs of apples to lug home.  I brought a big big over to Caroline and Zac at the farm, but when I got back home and saw just how much was still left I kind of wished I had given them more.  I’ll be spending the next week making every apple concoction you can imagine.  And I assure you we’ll be eating apple sauce all through the cold days of winter.