How About Them Apples?

We had a lot of fun today, heading out early to pick up Nate - and then driving west to Ellijay.  The weather was a bit risky with this really heavy rain and storms coming in early afternoon, so we thought we'd squeeze in a visit to pick apples at the Red Apple Barn.  I was a bit worried when it was actually raining already when we were there earlier, but the rain went away and we had a really great window of time where we could pick apples without worry about rain or any intense humidity in the sunlight either - the skies were pleasantly overcast.  It rained a few times today, but in each case it was as we were leaving our destinations - we were highly blessed!

As for the Red Apple Barn, we seemed to time things really great there too - we didn't have to wait on our tractor ride up the hill or wait for it on the way down either!  We paid and got a back that would be good for a peck of apples, and once more we rode up the hill towards the orchards.  It's a pleasant ride, one of the reasons Mom likes to go to this place.  Once at the top, we got the overview as always, but we knew ahead of time what we were after: Jonagold and Enterprise apples.  Mom saw online that these were already ready for picking, and so we were happy to head to Ellijay to get some of our favorite apples.  The Jonagold apples have been favorites for some time now, but we're enjoying those Enterprise apples too.  Yes, we were eating some while we were up there at the top of the mountain.  Yummy!

The ground was a little muddy here or there, but we carefully found our way to the rows of trees where we could find those apples, and then we began to pick some good ones.  We started with the Jonagold apples, and Nate was in there reaching up for some of the better looking apples too.  All four of us were getting some great apples - we were glad to be here earlier in the season this time.  There were much more apples on the trees at this point, and because of the threat of rain, there weren't as many people in the orchards either.

We picked apples for a little bit, starting with Jonagold and then heading over to the rows with Enterprise apples.  These are red apples with little white speckles, like stars on them.  I think outer space with little stars painted on the apples.  Space, the final frontier!

As I said, we got to the tractor just in time to head down.  We picked a few flowers at the bottom of the hill there, and I loaded the apples into the car.  Now it was time to head up to the shop!

We had our apple cinnamon doughnuts and cider at the shop, but we got a few other things there, like muscadine cider and some bread that Maddie thought would be pretty good.  We picked up some apple cider in a jug as well - we got a lot here!  And yes, as we were getting to the car, the rain came again.  We were finished there for the day, and the rain held off just for us.

Maddie tried Cheerwine for the first time!

We were hungry after this, and I was mentioning this barbecue place in Ellijay that I was able to see a few months ago.  It's a Roadside America type attraction, a place with a "Hill of Pigs."  It's Poole's Barbecue, and though I didn't eat there last time, we were just in time for lunch today.  We all got some really good barbecue, and we had leftovers for later too - we'll be eating barbecue tomorrow, I think!  Anyway, we all enjoyed the meal together there, and as a bonus, I got us a few pigs.  For explanation, the idea is that you can pay $10 for a pig shape, and your waitress will bring you a punch of markers.  Later on, they'll post that pig outside somewhere amongst the many, many, many other pigs.  So Maddie and Nate were working on one pig, while Mom and I decorated another pig.  That was actually pretty fun!  

It was a good visit there, and we left quite full and ready to head back east.  Since the rain had cleared out a bit, we saw another window open for a stop at Burt's Pumpkin Farm.  Nate had never been, and so the four of us stopped by early-early in the season to look at all the pumpkins, and take some pictures too.  I said I wasn't there to get any pumpkins, at least not yet.  Apparently, I didn't not tell the truth!  We picked up a few really odd pumpkins, this one green one that Mom has a great idea for a carving with.  The other pumpkin was just so odd, a bright orange pumpkin with these green growths all over it - you'll see a picture below.  We had Maddie pose inside a push cart at one point, an echo of a picture we took of her when she was three, and we also did some nice photos of Maddie amidst the sea of orange pumpkins, and some pictures of her and Nate together there too.  Mom got a metal decoration there, a pumpkin to post in front of the house.  But the storm was coming again.  The wind was blowing up.  Maddie was snapping a few pictures that you'll see below, and they were checking out the tractor over there.  But we made haste getting to the car with our two pumpkins, plus the metal one too.    Below you'll see some pictures from our stop at Burt's:

It rained hard on the way home.  How amazing our trip was to get all that in without really getting wet!  Everyone had a great time.  Nate brought home some apples to his parents, and it was late afternoon when we got back.  Tonight we sat down to watch "Men in Black II," and that was pretty much it for the day.  I read to Maddie, of course, still in the book "Feet of Clay."  After that we said our prayers, and got ourselves to sleep pretty quickly because of the full, full day.