A-Picking (And A-Digging) We Will Go...Our Apple Annie's Trip

We've been to Apple Annie's before (and I've blogged about it before, too!), but the trip we took to Willcox last weekend may have been our most fun yet. I'm not sure why...likely it was because our girls are all sufficiently old and autonomous enough to help us out.

As usual, our first stop was Apple Annie's Produce Garden, which lies a few miles away from the main Orchard. We don't often have a "plan" when we come here; we just like to see what's fresh and then see if we can't work it into our diets for the next several days. This time, we did something we'd never done before...we decided to dig for potatoes!

Usually, we just pluck the food right off the vine/branch/whatever. This time, we had fun getting our hands a little dirtier. The garden staff supplied the mini pitchforks, and we dug to with gusto.

As you can see by this "after" picture (taken later at home), we may have gone a bit overboard on the potato digging...but it was so much fun!

Everything on the table AND in the wagon is ours

We got plenty of other produce as well. A friend in Sahuarita wanted me to pick her up some green beans so she could can them, so we got about 10 pounds of those. In addition, we picked lots of squash (both zucchini and yellow summer squash), several green peppers, some humongous cucumbers, lots of jalapeno peppers, and several pounds worth of tomatoes. We bought 126 pounds of produce in all!

I was so inspired by all the fresh stuff I saw that I decided to can even more salsa than I had already done (which was about 12 pints, a week or two before). I guess Apple Annie's does this to me...I get in "food storage" mode every time I visit!

Lorelai is ready for fruit-picking ACTION.

After that big haul, we drove over to the orchard. Usually, we like to pick a few peaches at the orchard, but I'd done all my peach canning for the year already. Too bad, because apparently this has been a pretty bountiful year on the peach-growing front. However, I was interested in picking lots of their Bartlett pears, which my family eats more of anyway.

We got quite a haul of the pears this year! Then we headed for the apple orchard...this was the only (minor) disappointment of our trip:

Since we visited in late August, most of the apples hadn't fully ripened yet. I'd been secretly hoping that the Fuji apples were ready to be picked, but no such luck. Fuji apples are my favorite for making applesauce, which my kids love. However, there were Criterion apples ready to be picked, so we got a bunch of those...

As it turns out, the Criterions will probably can pretty well. They have the consistency of Granny Smith apples, and they are somewhat tart as well. They are a little too sour to make ideal applesauce, but I think they will make good apple butter! I also plan on canning some sliced apples (for pies & other desserts), and these will fit the bill nicely.

All our apples & pears in the wagon; all our girls on the table

After our hard work, it was time to eat! It's fairly expensive to eat the burger lunch at the orchard, but it's darn tasty as well. Plus, on this day, all lunchtime proceeds were going to the March of Dimes, so we were eating for a good cause. Well, two good causes...the March of Dimes, and stuffing our hungry stomachs.

No lunchtime at Apple Annie's is complete without a slice of their pie a la (gigantic) mode. I had apple cherry pie, with half a carton of vanilla ice cream on top:

The girls ate well! They also had a little time to goof off before we headed back home, heavy-laden with the fruits (and vegetables) of our labors.

So...she's a "crab-apple," then? Thank you, thank you!! I'll be here all week...

In my next installment, I'll discuss the "fate" of all this food (in other words, I'll give a brief report of my fall canning).