A Trip to the Apple Orchard and the Pumpkin Patch

I had many reasons for wanting to go to my favorite apple orchard yesterday, but the main one was the fear that if I didn't go soon, I might miss the season entirely.  I'm also doing something out of the ordinary with my students today, and apples will make the class a bit more festive (more details later).

I went to my favorite apple orchard, Coston's in Hendersonville, NC, where I've gone many times.  My phone took me a different route, through twisty back roads, past farms and fields of flowers (such tall sunflowers!) and late season corn.  I decided to stop at the pumpkin patch that's beside Coston's first--pumpkins first, then apples.

Much to my surprise, the pumpkin I got the other day at the grocery store cost less than the same size pumpkin at the patch.  Happily, there were others, and now I have a pumpkin up at the road by my mailbox.  

The apple orchard has delightful displays, which change from year to year.  This year featured tractors.

While I looked around the store at the pumpkin patch (every patch and orchard has a store now, it seems, a store that sells all kinds of stuff), I saw this box of tomatoes--$12 for the whole box, which is quite a deal, considering that the other tomatoes were $3 a pound and higher.  So in addition to the bushel of apples that I bought later, I also brought home roughly 25 pounds of tomatoes.

I bought a bushel of apples because it was so much cheaper, and apples will keep.  But when I got home, I thought, hmm, maybe I bought too many apples.  So I wrote to some of my neighbors and went out to share my apple bounty with others.  This morning I added a chopped apple to my oatmeal--delightful!