Weekending it: Apple Picking

This weekending it post it brought to you by the letter A - for apple!!

This past Saturday Dan and I dragged ourselves out of bed and despite the rain and dreary forecast headed Upstate to go apple picking.  Neither of us had ever been apple picking and since we had put it on our fall bucket list we decided to go.  This was literally the only day we could go and if we had postponed any longer we would have been left with all the sour apples since picking season is nearly over.

Dan did a bit of research online and found an orchard a couple of hours away and we headed out for a day-venutre.  We navigated around crowded Grand Central terminal and got on the Metro North train to Croton Falls.  The leaves have hardly started to turn in the city but Upstate there were blossoms of color everywhere.  Here are some movement shots from the train window:

When we got to North Salem there was a car service place to take us to the orchard.  Initially we planned on going to Outhouse Orchard but there was a place called Harvest Moon literally across the street so we stopped there first.

They had the most amazing display of harvest decorations with Halloween sprinkled everywhere.  There were all kinds of fresh produce and apple pies and cider donuts and everything fall and festive. 

We stopped at the cute pumpkin patch too.  We couldn't carry anything big back with us but we were both amazed at all the different types of pumpkins there.

They also had chickens and goats roaming around. 

We decided to go across the street to the Outhouse Orchard to see what the picking selection was like there.  They didn't have as cool of a browsing place and when I asked about apple picking the girl looked at me and said sorta snarky "there are none left on the trees you have to pick from the bins."  We were disappointed in that so walked back across the street.

The lady at Harvest Moon told us the same thing but said we could go into the orchard and pick whatever we could find.  She said there was nothing left on the trees either but we found a ton!  Some of the trees had no more apples at reaching height so there were these long poles with basket-like things at the top to help you grab apples way up high. 

We were pleased with our haul.

A lot of the apples had weird warty looking blemishes from hail.  But they were still tasty

After picking we stocked-up on all the other goodies in the store.  Apple pancake mix, authentic maple syrup, pumpkin and apple butter, some treats for some care packages, and then some hot apple cider and fresh cider donuts before we headed back to the city.  Yum!