Fall Festivus

This week I was lucky enough to have two friends, who moved away this year, come back for a visit. Denise and Kristie! :) We decided to have a Saturday filled with Fall fun and declared it Fall Festivus. We started off with apple picking in the morning.

Kristie, Rachel, Mollie, Amanda, Denise

Funny story about this next picture. Kristie walked up to the board first. When I followed, I hit my head on a board I didn't notice that she hadn't needed to duck under. Ouch! It's a pain being tall sometimes.

I love road signs! This one, on a muddy, dim, tree-lined street, rivaled the gems we saw in Ireland.

I decided to share this with Michelle, whom I went to Ireland with. :) Her comments:

Where exactly did you go apple picking? Is it a warning that the children have balance issues and put their hands up in the air saying ‘Oh, no! Please catch me!’ as they trip and fall? Or are they gifted with super-human flying skills and you need to watch for them on take-off?

Because it was later in the season, most of the low apples were gone. They gave us this nifty little apple picker on a stick. You needed to get this plastic toothed crown around the apple and twist (the proper way to pick and apple) until it fell into the little sack.

Here is Mollie reaching in to pull out the apple.

Our bags of loot. We raked them in!

After filling our bags with apples, we took a little tractor-pulled wagon hayride.
We played a little hot potato (pumpkin) game. Denise ended up with it and got to take it home.

Next our Fall Festivus of All Things Fall took us to a cranberry bog. This isn't the one we toured, but this bog was gathering the berries that day.

We toured Flax Pond Farms. They don't gather their berries by flooding, but flood it later in the year to protect the cranberries from freezing during the winter. A machine rakes through the vines, gathering the berries. A helicopter actually comes to carry the cranberries away.

This is the tool that was used before machines. Can you imagine covering that huge field with one of these? Hard, hard work.

Our group met up with Trina and Jeffra. It was just a little cold and windy outside, so we quickly moved the tour inside.

They demonstrated how they used to sort the cranberries. First, you dump the crate of berries into a sort of strainer, which will blow out the debris of leaves and twigs. The berries are then carried up to the top of the sorter.

I learned that... good cranberries bounce! This machine has panels that you can set at certain heights, so if the berries are good enough, they'll bounce over and pass through to the next stage. They can sort out different grades of cranberries this way, depending on which panel they make it past.

The cranberries come out of the machine where someone will sit and feel them. They pull out the soft ones, and set aside the white berries for white cranberry juice.

Next, after a little hot chocolate to warm us up, we headed to a Finnish sauna. It was a little crowded, but the hot steam felt so good. There is also a lake outside to jump in when it got too hot. Nice to go back and forth between the two. We ended the night with some yummy Italian food. It was a great Fall Festivus day!