There's even a huge NC Apple Festival in Hendersonville every year to celebrate apple season. I thought apple season was closer to late October and November. Turns out many apple orchards have been open since early August!
So on Monday some friends from church invitied us to go with them to an orchard not too far from our home. It was a beautiful orchard in the foothills of NC. So beautiful that we spent most of the time ooohing and ahhhing over the scenery and picking the apples that we only took two pictures. Oops! We had to pick carefully since the crazy weather this year made many of the apples have bad spots on them. Fletcher was very good at carefully inspecting the apples before picking them. Luke had a little more difficulty with this. Plus, he was hot/tired/thirsty and hungry even though we had just eaten a full picnic lunch in the shade. My parental instincts tell me that he'd rather pick apples in the air conditioned grocery store. The orchard also had Asian pears which are sort of a cross between a pear and an apple. They had peaches too, but we opted not to get any of those since it was late in the season and they were almost all gone.
All of the trees weren't marked, but we think we ended up with some Galas, Jonagold, Golden Delicious, Mutsu, Honey Crisp and Ginger Gold. We ended up with 1/2 bushel of apples and 1/2 peck of Asian pears. I'll let you figure out how much a bushel and a peck are (and a hug around the neck). So now we have lots of apples. We read that apples will keep in the refrigerator for around 90 days. They ripen faster if they are left on the counter. I have a great recipe for pumpkin apple muffins and another one for apple bread. Fletcher has already asked for some in his lunch this week.
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