Apple-picking, ice cream, and Pumpkinland
I really wanted to do a lot of fall activities with Jenson this year. He’s at the age to start to enjoy it, and it’s his last year to enjoy it as an only child. I hear things get harder with two kids…
One sunny Sunday afternoon, we decided to go pick some apples after nap. We always go to Lynd’s Fruit Farm, but not until the end of the month because I like the Goldrush apples. I did a little research the night before and found that Branstool Orchards was only about 20 minutes away and they had a large variety of apples. Really, I hadn’t decided between two orchards that are off of the same road, and when we got to the intersection where we had to decide, I just said, turn right. It was a fantastic orchard – tons of varieties and really pretty property. They had wagons to pull your haul (or kids) through the aisles whereas at Lynd’s, you just park your car in the aisles where you want to pick because they have so many rows of each variety, that you move your car if you want several varieties. Branstool had 2-4 rows of each varieties, so it was easy to get some of each. I think we settled on Pinova as our favorite variety of Branstool.
Jenson liked picking some apples out of the trees, but he preferred to sit in the wagon and eat some (which they encouraged). I think he ate most of 2.5 apples while we were there!
He carried his monkey around some of the aisles while we picked.
Since we bought over $20 worth of apples, we were allowed to pick a pumpkin from the patch for free. She told Lo where the patch was and that there weren’t many pumpkins left (due to the excessive rain in June hurting the crop), but failed to mention it was REALLY far away. It’s okay…it was a nice day, so a long walk was no big deal – and the property was gorgeous.
After we left, we stopped at Velvet Ice Cream Factory because it was on the way and it seemed irresponsible not to stop. It was 5 minutes before closing, so we just sat outside at a picnic table. Jenson enjoyed as many bites as he could beg off of Lo, and we watched the ducks on the pond for a few minutes.
While we were out, we decided to kill a little more time and go back to Dupler’s Pumpkin Land since Jenson loved it so much and I told him we’d bring Daddy there. He had a blast feeding the goats some corn, talking to the bunnies, and playing of the Little Tykes toys.
The sun was going down and it was starting to get chilly, so we went to say goodbye to the goats on the way to the car. The goats must have remembered Jenson, because they were very interested and poking their heads through the fence. Before we knew what happened, Jenson leaned in and kissed the black goat on the mouth to say goodbye. It happened too fast to get a picture, but it was so funny. We just were so surprised he did that – he loves to give kissed, but he doesn’t usually try to kiss animals.