Apple Picking

We went apple picking two weeks ago (I meant to blog about this a while ago but I never finished the post).  We thought it was supposed to be chilly but it turned out to be a gorgeous day!  We had quite a few orchards to chose from and we had no idea how to chose!  (McHenry county has TONS of apple orchards in case anyone is looking for one).  We actually changed where we were going once we started driving.  We ended up at Woodstock Country Orchard.  It was exactly what we were looking for-just apple trees!  No commerciality (is that a word?)-no jumping pillow, no corn maze, nothing else-just apples.  When we got there, we  found out that they had slashed the prices-bonus!  They were out of some apples but we discovered some new ones!  We picked Cortlands, Senshu (yummy!), Melrose (my new favorite apple), Jonathans and Golden Delicious.

They had a limited amount of most of their apples except for Jonathans.  Those trees were just laden with apples!  We had started with Cortlands, then moved over to Melrose and Senshu.  Poor N2 kept looking for apples and couldn't find any!  There were only a couple left on each of the trees and quite a few trees with none.  Brian and I would find the apples and then N2 would pick them for us.  They had fun and they also had fun eating apples.  It was hard to keep them from taking a bite of each apple.  They did finally eat a whole apple or two or three.  And they rarely eat apples!

 (look at Noah's face in the first picture to see how hard apple picking is!)

 The orchard had wagons for people to use-that was really nice!

While we were at the apple orchard we decided to pick some raspberries.  I never know if N2 will eat raspberries or not.  I picked one for each of them on the way in and they gobbled it down which is why I decided to pick raspberries.  I would pick some and put them in the basket and N2 would grab them out and eat them all.  This kept happening until I told them that they couldn't eat any out of the basket but that they could pick as many from the bushes as they wanted to eat.  That seemed to work!  Noah was a great helper and held the basket around his neck for us.  He didn't eat any out of the basket!

We got 1/2 bushel, 1/2 peck and a pint of raspberries for just $18!  We didn't come home with a pint of raspberries but between what we came home with and what N2 ate at the orchard, we had a pint :)  We'll definitely head to this orchard again!

**Note now that our apples are all gone.  Senshu need to be eaten right away.  Within one week of picking them they became mushy.  They were very crisp right after we bought them.  Maybe they need to be stored in a cooler place?