Scenic orchard pathways. Crisp red apples. Cool air. Long sleeves, maybe even a sweater. Warm apple cider.
Like a postcard from New England. Or a Robert Frost poem.
Those were the images in my mind, at least.
In North Carolina, in the foothills, in mid-September, apple picking was not so romantic.
It was hot, sticky and more like work than I imagined.
I had been wanting to go apple picking for several years. I think of it as an October outing, but most of the apple orchards anywhere close to us finish up their season and close by Oct. 1. I tried to schedule an orchard photo shoot for our family a couple years ago, only to learn I was too late.
This year, I decided we'd better go earlier.
If I'd had the choice, we would've gone farther into the mountains to pick. The area west of Asheville, around Hendersonville, is covered in orchards, but that's more than three hours from home. Too much for a day trip.
We'd have to do with one closer to us. When I started thinking we'd try to squeeze in another Tweetsie visit, I decided we could probably manage a two-fer. Tweetsie before lunch; apple picking after.
It did work out that way, but the picking was not nearly as fun as I had dreamed.
The orchard I chose was a small, noncommercial farm. It was a no-frills family farm run by a farmer who looked to be at 70 or 80 ... no hayrides, no bathrooms, no cider presses. And sadly, very few apples.
Upon our dusty arrival at the top of a large hill (calling it a mountain is too generous), the farmer told us many of the apples had been damaged by a freeze earlier in the week. He said the apples were still OK to eat, but they weren't pretty.
He gave us a giant bucket and assured Sawyer that it was all right to taste a few along the way.
We had no idea what kind of apples we were picking … there was no map, no tree markers.
And the majority of the apples were on the ground, causing us to go rolling a few times.
The grass through the orchard had not been mowed, so some of it was knee-high. And all around the trees were these pesky weeks covered sharp, four-pronged barbs that stuck in your shirt, your pants, your socks and your shoelaces.
We were already covered spikes before we realized it, and it was hard to steer clear of them.
Finding decent apples on the tree was like hunting for a needle in a haystack. You'd find a pretty red one, go to pull it and it would be rotten on the backside. And I had to keep reminding Sawyer not to chuck them in the bucket. I figured half of what we'd pick would end up bruised.
It took us forever to fill up that bucket, something I'm not sure WHY I was so determined to do.
We were both sweaty and dirty by the end, and we're darn lucky neither of us got stuck by the hundreds of bees attracted by all those fermenting apples.
We lugged our now-full bucket back to the farmer, handed over $10 and received an enormous bag of apples. They were so tiny and the bucket was so huge … I hadn't really thought about how MANY apples we'd end up with. (Or what the heck I'd do with all of them!)
Thankfully, I'd brought Sawyer an extra shirt so he didn't have to ride home with barbs poking him.
It was not the idyllic afternoon I had dreamed of, but it's a memory we'll be able to laugh about forever.
And maybe next time, IF I can ever convince him to go apple picking again, we'll drive just a bit farther west.
Finally home with the fruits of our labor (which took us days to peel and chop)!
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