The "Three Little White's" (and two big White's) really enjoyed the fall season this weekend!
On Friday Chandler and I got to go on a field trip with his school to Alldredge Apple Orchard. It was a neat little farm with wonderful fall activities for the kids. Chandler and I got to feed chickens, goats, and rabbits. We also got to pick apples, watch them make cider with an old fashioned cider mill, go on a hayride, and watch bees make honey! It was a great day! I so rarely get to spend time with just ONE of my kids at a time, that I was loving every moment Chandler and I had alone. I'm so excited that his school is such a positive and fun place for him right now.
Here are a few of the apple orchard pictures!
Feeding the chickens!
Picking the "perfect" apple.
Giant pumpkins are so much fun to climb on!
Of course the baker in me just HAD to make an apple pie with our fresh picked apples (then we had to share it so I could stay on my diet!). We also picked up some apple butter and honey while we visited the orchard.
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Oh, how I wish I had taken pictures of the "ACORN" part of my story....because this was a hoot! On Saturday (after my "short" 8 mile run) the whole family headed over to my sister Tiffany's house for an "Acorn Picking Party". It seems that this is THE YEAR OF THE ACORNS! I've never, in my entire life, seen SO MANY acorns in one yard. Racking them all up was a big job....but sorting them out and collecting them in "clean" bags was a whole other story!! You see, Tiffany found out that the conservation department is paying people by the pound for their acorns this year, so she thought that sounded like a splendid way to make some "easy" money. SOOOOO, she decided to invite the whole family to a fall "acorn picking party". She made yummy soups, breads, and fall treats, and I brought over my apple pie. Everyone had some snacks and then set about the task of picking up the acorns! The thinking was that if we all pitched in we would have the sorting of the acorns licked in a few hours. WRONG! After six LONG hours of picking through mountains of leaves and dried grass for "whole/uncracked" acorns, the troops were beginning to fade. There were grandparents in the ditches picking out acorns, aunts and uncles on the driveway sorting through piles of debris for acorns, and we even put the children to work collecting acorns in their Halloween buckets! At one point we started using a box fan, BBQ grill rack, and leaf blower to try and separate the acorns from the grass and leaves. It was a sight to behold folks!
*At the end of the day we had "picked" an estimated 350 lbs of acorns! And there was STILL 3 giant lawn and leaf bags to go through....the back yard was never touched!!
**The Sunday activities will be in post #2. My original title for this post was "Apple picking, Acorns, and Arrowhead"....but the "Arrowhead" part will be continued (thank you blogger)....
3 comments:
What do you do with all the acorns?
You take them to the conservation dept to have them weighed & then they plant the acorns wherever they see fit. You have to have "clean/whole" acorns because they load them right into a hopper to plant.
There will be quite a few "Mighty White Oaks" thanks to us-LOL!
Wow! 350 lbs!!!!! I would have loved to have seen you guys out there "panning" for acorns. Sounds like a blast. I think that would be a wonderful "family" event every year. How fun.
So how much do they pay for acorns? I remember my grandpa used to pick up the walnuts in his yard for $$. He would spend ours doing it but didn't make much money for his effort.
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