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After Apple Picking
Lauren's been wanting to go apple-picking, and today we finally had a beautiful day for it and the time to make the trip. Although there are closer orchards to us, we weren't sure they were "you pick" places. Lauren found one place that looked like it would be quite fun--a good variety of apples and lots of touristy stuff, a real carnival atmosphere. It was about an hour and twenty minutes away, up toward Gary and Chicago. Which, ultimately, is probably what made it a poor choice for us. I found another place that was an equal distance away, though northeast instead of northwest, and that made all the difference. Oh, it did have its hayride tour and pumpkin patch and all, but it was far more down to earth than the one catering to the city folks who'd come to the northwest part of the state. Here, in a nutshell an apple peel, was the difference: $1.65 per pound vs. $0.69 per pound. Someone, I guess, has to pay for all the fun. We wanted an enjoyable excursion, but we wanted a decent price on apples, too.
So we drove through the Indiana countryside, once getting lost either because of poor directions from mapquest (probably unlikely) or because someone didn't pay close attention as he was writing the directions down (our printer's out of ink, but still, since I'm the "he" in question, that seems unlikely to me too), but the weather was nice enough that the delay wasn't altogether unpleasant.
Kercher's Orchard was busy, activities in full swing, from a hayride around the orchard to people buying things in the store, to people wandering the pumpkin patch, to what was presumably the main attraction, apple picking. We each took two baskets which we split between red delicious and yellow delicious. Had we been as clever as some, we would have brought a wagon or some other conveyance (Lauren suggested the owned-but-unused stroller) to carry even more apples, or at least our big cloth grocery bags, but we were limited to the bags and baskets they provided us.
Once you got past the trees closest to the central path, which had been picked over fairly well, perhaps just six feet farther on the trees were loaded with big ripe apples, in clumps that demanded to be harvested whole--pick one of four and three others rained down as well. We came away with about 48 pounds of apples, all told, with plans to make apple sauce and apple butter (as yet unfulfilled, and no definite timetable set, other than that it'll have to before I head east on Tuesday). I'm not sure yet how much sauce it will make or whether it will turn out to be much of a value, but we feel pretty good about the time spent in any case. We didn't have time to get sick of apple-picking, or of the beautiful day.
I did quickly get sick of the poor service at Joann Fabrics, but that's another story, and such momentary displeasure couldn't mar what was, in truth, a very good day.