Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Apples?


This weekend was spent with a glorious trip to my old home in Western MA. The plan was to have a wonderful fall weekend replete with apple picking, cider drinking, cider donut eating, apple themed baking and visiting lovely friends.

Notice a common thread in most of these activities?

apples.

Seems simple enough, right? Western MA, fall. . .obviously apple picking will ensue. Thus, after a fun visit with a friend and her gorgeous baby daughter, I met up with several friends and headed to Atkins Farm. The only problem was, as we rounded the corner and blew up to the orchard it was surprisingly dead.

A chat with a nearby farm stand person revealed that a hard frost had apparently caused a lack of apples around and a lot of places were no longer having apple picking.

After regrouping we headed to another local orchard, albeit slightly farther away. We arrived still in good spirits and headed over to the booth to get a bag and start picking!

After being completely ignored for several minutes we were finally given a bag and told to pay after which seemed rather strange. It all became clear, however, when we headed into the orchard only to realize there were no apples on the trees.

We literally found 2 1/2 apples. And when we went back and returned the bag, one of our group informed the man that there weren't enough apples to make it worth a bag. His response was a nasty look, and more silence.

In defeat, the gang trudged back to the car defeated only to realize as we got into the car that people were milling around with bags of apples. Probably because there was an entire separate part of the orchard across the street ( which we only realized while driving away).

Thanks hostel orchard worker for failing to tell us about the whole other section of the orchard. It resulted in us leaving in a huff and buying sub par apples from the grocery store. Then, we made mediocre apple crisp for our dinner party that night. It was rather embarrassing.




At least not all of the trip was a bust! Here's a some shots of me indulging in one of Atkins' life changing cider donuts. You have not experienced fall until you have delighted in one of these little treats.




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