An apple a day

Eating her weight in apples

It couldn't have been a more beautiful Fall day for the quintessential Michigan apple-picking experience- sunny, crisp, and just chilly enough to make fresh donuts and warm cider the perfect treat after all that walking and foraging. The Cooks, Cooneys, Sophie and I (Jude was doing a bike tour in Detroit) visited Wasem Fruit Farm where the Fall picking season had just begun two weeks ago. MacIntoshes, Cortlands, Jonathans, and Honey Crisps were ripe for the picking and Sophie for one, couldn't wait to sink her teeth in almost each and every apple she managed to either pick from the tree or off the ground.

Chomp chomp chomp

She had a wonderful time running about with the big kids, stomping through the apple trees, crawling under the foliage for lower-hanging fruit, and just basically reveling in the experience of being able to pick something off a tree and then putting it straight into your mouth without having Mama take it away from you because it wasn't edible (for instance, a quarter or a bulb syringe...) It didn't matter that her pants were getting wet from the dew-damp grass or that she kept falling over the apples strewn all over the ground- she could RUN and there were apples to be eaten, and that was what mattered :)

There were raspberries too and those were even more fun for Sophie because unlike most of the apples which were too high for her to pick on her own, the raspberry bushes were the perfect height for her to look at, touch, and pick.

Sweet raspberries

Squishing it in her hands

Sophie also had apple cider for the first time. I wish she could experience fully the whole warm-donut-with-hot-cider-after-apple-picking experience, but she didn't seem too bothered that everyone was having donuts except her. I think she was just happy to have done something new, fun, and exciting. And the fresh cider was also probably tasty enough to distract her from the fact that she didn't get to have any fried dough.

More importantly though, she got to spend time with friends (both the kids and grown-ups) and so couple that with being out in the wide open orchard with copious amounts of apple literally within her reach, it was just the most perfect way for a two-year-old to spend a beautiful Fall morning.

Julianne and Finn- the best babysitters-in-training ever!

More pictures here.