Apple Picking & Grape Harvest

Yesterday we decided to drive to Eastern Washington to pick some apples for our apple press.  The three hour (plus Starbucks stops) drive was totally worth it to spend a few hours with our friend Matt, eat apples straight off the tree, eat real Mexican food, and even bring home a few grapes!

I love taking my kids to the farm - or where ever the food is actually grown - so they understand that food has to grow.  That it comes from somewhere, not just from the grocery store.  Or from an Amazon Fresh box!  Plus we get to have fresh apple juice now.

We're also going to try making some grape juice with chardonnay and cabernet franc grapes. I want to make them separately so we can have 'cab franc juice' and 'chardonnay juice.'  It seems like it would make a good mixer.  We'll see how that works out.

It's always so fun to go over and see Matt.  We learn so much from him while we are there.  It's amazing to see what kind of apples are considered 'unacceptable' to sell.  Because we were picking in an organic field, it's natural to see tiny worm holes.  But they can't pick those for sale because consumers won't buy anything with a mark - of any kind really.  And size is an issue too.  Pearl loved finding the tiny 'Pearl' apples for herself.  All the better for us, because tiny worm holes and small apples are perfect for making juice out of.

I think we ate our weight in apples while we were standing in the field.  The only thing better than eating apples straight out of the field is the smell of fresh picked apples that flooded the car the entire way home.