Apple Picking

I have been quite remiss in posting pictures of the various activities I've been up to - so I shall try to remedy that.

Earlier this fall, the dorm I live in had an "apple baking" event for all the girls. To obtain all the apples for this event, four of the dorm RA's were supposed to go apple picking the day before. However, one RA dropped out and one was sick, so myself and one other RA were left to get apples for 100 girls who had signed up for baking.

The two of us drove for about 45 minutes to get out to an orchard. 

We started with the pears:

Then moved on to find the apples:

It was a beautiful day, and others were also enjoying the open air:

Well, in the case of the smaller children maybe not the open air. But definitely enjoying the apples. The trees were all turning colors:

We did as much tasting as we pleased. It really is pretty neat how different the flavors can be. You don't really notice until you eat several varieties back to back. Or, hand to hand:

Now, when we got to the orchard the kindly owner handed us a few small paper baggies to fill with apples. We warned her that we needed a lot of apples - so she handed us a slightly bigger bag. "No," we tried again, "a LOT of apples. About 200 of them." 

"Ah," she murmured, "well then..." as she went to the back of the shop. She returned with several bushel-sized bags, which we gladly accepted.

We decided to get bushel-sized bags of three varieties of cooking apples:

Which we barely managed to haul back to the main barn:

Then we didn't want to miss out on all the other varieties, so we got a few of each kind just for eating and tasting. All in all, quite a car-full!

We stopped for lunch on the way back at a quaint New England deli:

But wait, what's that in the bottom left corner? Yeah, that weird pole sticking randomly out of the sidewalk?

Yeah, that's a horse head. On a pole. Just because.

Total haul for the day: 137.5 pounds of apples, and one gallon of apple cider the owner threw in for free. Not bad for two city girls!