Ok so as I have mentioned to you all before I am a huge fan of new experiences, especially when they involve being outdoors! This may seem funny to many of you, especially those from the more northern states, but being a Floridian my entire life until the last year and a half, this whole Fall thing is still VERY new to me! And one thing that I had sadly NEVER done in all my dear years of life is go apple picking, and to a pumpkin patch! Of course I had heard of these activities and thought they would be fun, but its kinda hard to find a good apple orchard in the middle of Florida! (now oranges, is a whole other story!)
So we were able to find a great orchard only about an hour outside of the city! It was the most perfect fall day, I was wearing my boots and had gotten a pumpkin spice latte!
Upon arrival we were greeted with some bad news, apparently because of our summer being so hot the apple season had been cut very short, meaning that even though the first of October is usually more than ideal fro apples the majority of them had all been picked over. We were not going to take this as an excuse and decided that we would venture out there even if the apples weren't of plenty.
At first the news was correct almost all the trees were completely bare, except for the occasional rotten one with worm holes. But we kept going and eventually after going out the the "late bloomer" trees we were able to find some. (for those of you who do not know, depending on the kind of apple they bloom and mature at different points of the season)
The apple weren't exactly the most beautiful huge red delicious types that we had originally hoped for, but they were still quite good, even if they were on the smaller side.
I quickly got the hang of using the "picking stick" which is a large pole with a half cage looking thing on the top which makes it MUCH easier to grab the higher apples. A few times I got anxious and may of started a little fight with the tree and it's branches but I did eventually get that particular apple!
After about an hour or so we had more apples then we could imagine and got worried our bag would break so we headed back toward the car. We dropped off the apples and headed to the main farm which had homemade apple cider, apple butter, honey, and made-to-order caramel apples!
Definitely had to get some homemade apple cider, this may be one of my most favorite parts of fall, warm apple cider with some cinnamon sticks!
After admiring all the yummy food, we headed to the pumpkin patch! Surprisingly I also had NEVER been to a pumpkin patch or picked my own pumpkin! I grew up going to the local super market and finding one next to the cereal isle! The pumpkin patch was so much fun, quite dirty but they had a ton of huge pumpklins! After some diligent searching I found my perfect pumpkin, 22 pounds of orange round awesomeness!! There is something very satisfying about finding that perfect pumpkin and cutting it right off the vine.
Literally minus the beautiful sunrise in this photo, this is almost exactly what the pumpkin patch looked like! Little dirty and earthy, but ideal for the perfect picking of a pumpkin!
So I've gotta say even with the limited supplies of apples, I felt as if my first apple picking and pumpkin patch experience was quite the success! Stay tuned for some hopefully awesome apple desserts and recipes to be coming to the Recipe page soon!
Upon arrival we were greeted with some bad news, apparently because of our summer being so hot the apple season had been cut very short, meaning that even though the first of October is usually more than ideal fro apples the majority of them had all been picked over. We were not going to take this as an excuse and decided that we would venture out there even if the apples weren't of plenty.
At first the news was correct almost all the trees were completely bare, except for the occasional rotten one with worm holes. But we kept going and eventually after going out the the "late bloomer" trees we were able to find some. (for those of you who do not know, depending on the kind of apple they bloom and mature at different points of the season)
The apple weren't exactly the most beautiful huge red delicious types that we had originally hoped for, but they were still quite good, even if they were on the smaller side.
I quickly got the hang of using the "picking stick" which is a large pole with a half cage looking thing on the top which makes it MUCH easier to grab the higher apples. A few times I got anxious and may of started a little fight with the tree and it's branches but I did eventually get that particular apple!
After about an hour or so we had more apples then we could imagine and got worried our bag would break so we headed back toward the car. We dropped off the apples and headed to the main farm which had homemade apple cider, apple butter, honey, and made-to-order caramel apples!
Definitely had to get some homemade apple cider, this may be one of my most favorite parts of fall, warm apple cider with some cinnamon sticks!
After admiring all the yummy food, we headed to the pumpkin patch! Surprisingly I also had NEVER been to a pumpkin patch or picked my own pumpkin! I grew up going to the local super market and finding one next to the cereal isle! The pumpkin patch was so much fun, quite dirty but they had a ton of huge pumpklins! After some diligent searching I found my perfect pumpkin, 22 pounds of orange round awesomeness!! There is something very satisfying about finding that perfect pumpkin and cutting it right off the vine.
Literally minus the beautiful sunrise in this photo, this is almost exactly what the pumpkin patch looked like! Little dirty and earthy, but ideal for the perfect picking of a pumpkin!
So I've gotta say even with the limited supplies of apples, I felt as if my first apple picking and pumpkin patch experience was quite the success! Stay tuned for some hopefully awesome apple desserts and recipes to be coming to the Recipe page soon!
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