Stashed Apple Walk

Is it a shock that I forgot to finish up a post from a few weeks ago?! Not to me LOL

Apple picking season is one of my favorite for sure! There are so many physical and mental health benefits from this activity that it's no wonder I look forward to it so much!

I went apple picking with my son a few months ago at this point and it was a lot of fun, as it always is. I am also cherishing these times with him because I know each year he is going to grow up a little bit more each time we go. I can still pick him up and put him on my shoulders, but can I do that next year? It's hard to say, and would he even want to? Again, hard to say but I made sure to do it this year and really appreciate the time.

The apple orchard we went to this year is one that we've been to before and we do visit it every year for other fruits like blueberries, cherries and others. We don't normally go apple picking here for whatever reason, maybe because we come here so frequently for the other things that we are trying to branch ourselves out a bit more.

The orchard is nice though, and it's actually quite large. I forgot that it is on both sides of the street when it comes to apples! There are also a good variety of apples, many of them are not the normal popular ones like McIntosh which is cool. We got to try some brand new ones this year!

With the warm summer we had, and decent bit of rain during it, we were expecting apples that were going to be a little bit bigger. It's all how things go though. Some years the apples are gigantic while other years they are small. They were medium sized, I suppose you could say. That's a good thing because it's got a good blend of size, flavor and ripeness to it.

When the apples are too big then they often don't have a lot of flavor to them which sucks. They are still good but you don't get the good bite of flavor that you would from a more normal sized apple. When the apple is small, it can either taste extremely good and dense or it can be really poor. We've had some years where there is very little rainfall and the apples are small but pack quite a punch in terms of flavor! This year I'm glad we got a good mixture of both. Flavor and medium sized make for great eating!

As with any apple orchard, it’s hard for people who have never been there to see so many apples on the ground. It’s a natural thing for it and that’s actually how they make apple cider strangely enough lol.

They take the apples that fall on the ground and pile them up into giant containers and crush them. There’s definitely plenty of other things in there as well but I think there’s plenty of alcohols and things that form to kill the bacteria and critters that want to live in it. It makes some delicious apple cider at the end of the day!

What about you, do you have a favorite fruit to pick and when was the last time you went picking? Let me know in the comments!