Apple Picking Adventure

I said in my post yesterday I'd talk more about our apple picking adventure this last weekend.  Nate was originally going to brew beer on Sunday, but while we had some family time on Saturday it was a bit scattered and he really wanted to do something with just the three of us, so he decided not to brew and that we should instead go find an apple orchard to wander around.  I had grown up going to an orchard in White Bear Lake, MN called Pine Tree, but decided against going there because we wanted to be able to walk around outside with Oliver and there isn't much of that at Pine Tree.  There are some other fun sounding orchards west of Minneapolis that I think will be fun when Oliver is older.  After some debate we finally settled on an orchard near Stillwater, MN called Aamodt's Apple Farm.  They have pick your own apples, lots of space to walk around and be outside and a little winery/vineyard for adults.  Sounded perfect to us!

We got there right when they opened for the day.  We had tried to time it so Oliver would nap in the car on the way out there, but that didn't quite happen.  That was ok though, we set him up in his stroller and proceeded to explore.  We decided to do a pick your own apples bag since I had never done that before. They were letting people pick Haralson apples that day.  It was neat, there were tons of trees to pick apples off of!

Oliver wasn't real sure about what we were doing, he wanted to be moving.  He sat patiently and took it all in though!

I was surprised by how short some of the apple trees were.  I'm not sure if all apple trees are this short or if they do something to keep them low to the ground, but they were very easy to walk up to and grab apples from!

As we walked back to the barn we passed some trees that had a lot of apples on the ground.  We're not sure if this area is where people were picking on another day, or if these trees are already done with their growing season or not.  Lots of wasted apples on the ground though!

We decided to do a wine tasting too, but Oliver was getting unhappy in his stroller, so Nate put him in the Ergo carrier and Ollie finally fell asleep!  We covered his head and protected him and Nate just carried him around for awhile.  I joked with him that now he has a sense of what it was like to be pregnant!

We were hungry then, so we bought ourselves an apple brat with slaw for lunch and sat outside and enjoyed it.  Ollie woke up and was hungry.  We offered him small bits of apple, but he was more interested in the tomato puree we brought him instead!

It was such a fun day and now I feel like I can cross something off my fall bucket list.  I love going to the apple orchard every year and I was so excited to share this experience with my little guy!  I can't wait until he's a little bigger and can enjoy some of the fun activities they had for kids - they had an area with riding toys and also a little apple barrel train ride that I think he'd adore when he's a little bigger!  And now I have tons of apples to bake with and make goodies - I'd better get on that!

What's on your fall bucket list?