Last weekend we made our annual trip to go apple picking. I grew up in Upstate New York and apple picking was part of my childhood and something I absolutely want to do with my children. We usually try to go Upstate to the home I grew up in and pick apples at Bowman’s, my favorite orchard, but the last couple of years it’s been hard to make the trip with the girl’s busy schedule. This year we went with good friends to Orchards of Concklin in Pomona, NY.
We picked red and golden delicious apples. The kids really got into picking. They jumped to pick apples.
We rented long sticks with baskets at the ends so they could pick apples at the top of the tree.
Here were the “Dads”. Don’t they fit right into the orchard with the Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and iPhone!?
This was the youngest apple picker in the group. It was hard for him to smile because he was a little under the weather.
This was our apple sorting station. I had a peeler, knife, and wet towel to taste test the apples. I made sure we only took home the best looking apples with their stem. The attached stem helps the apples stay fresh longer. Any apple left behind would be picked up by the orchard and made into apple cider.
Here was the apple picking crew. As you can see, we had all experience levels and heights. Of course the mom of these three boys is a good friend, look at how well she dresses them!
I let the 2 oldest children use the camera to take our picture. They did a really good job!
The orchard was on a hill. Going down was not bad. Coming up with all our apples was a different story.
The fun continued after apple picking…
We enjoyed apple cider and donuts from the store at the orchard.
The kids raced each other while waiting for the inflatable play area to open.
Then they had a blast riding all of the rides and slides. There was an inflatable haunted house all of the kids were excited to go into. The concept of an inflatable haunted house is weird but apparently it was smokey and had more inflatable stuff inside. While waiting for the kids, we see a zipper in the middle of the house open up and Baby and Princess come out. Baby was scared inside and started crying and all of the kids helped her find the emergency exit (zipper) to get out. Picturing all of the kids coming together to help her…I love this story.
After all of the orchard fun, we headed closer to home to a brick oven pizza place for lunch. It was my good friend, J’s, birthday a couple days before so we celebrated with pizza and white sangria.
Cheers to apple picking, good friends, birthdays, and emergency exit zippers,
The Dumpling Mama xo