Our Super-Sized Trip To Apple Annie's

Our family loves visiting Apple Annie's, the pick-it-yourself orchard/produce garden in Willcox, Arizona, every fall. Most years, though, we visit in late August or early September, and focus on the seasonal peaches, pears, and peppers. For our trip last year, we even got to dig for potatoes!

This year, we decided to "go the extra mile" with Apple Annie's and visit later in the fall. That way, more varieties of apple would be available in their orchards (usually, only the Criterion apples are ripe enough to be picked in early September...we wanted more variety this time around!). But there were other reasons to visit Apple Annie's in October...like the pumpkin patch! And the corn maze! So we decided to get all our fall harvesting done in one fell swoop...by spending most of the day at Apple Annie's. We'd be ending our Fall Break week with a bang!

When we got to Apple Annie's, we decided to have a quick snack, to give us some energy for the first portion of our day.

Then it was time to head over to the hayride!

Lorelai preferred to sit in the back of the wagon

Look at all those pumpkins out there!

Unlike our trip to the Agua Linda Farm last fall, Apple Annie's had a large, thriving pumpkin patch, with plenty of big healthy pumpkins just waiting to be chopped from the vine. Plus we got our very own shears...

...and friendly staff who helped carry our pumpkins back to the hay wagon. (Not that we NEEDED help, mind you...we're not total wimps. But it was nice of them to provide help all the same!)

The girls with their awesome pumpkins

We enjoyed watching the farmhands chuck the pumpkins on the wagon...

...and off again, once we made it back to the barn!

While Nathan paid for our pumpkins and loaded them into the car, the girls amused themselves by playing in the "corn box"...basically, a huge sandbox with dried-up corn kernels in place of the sand.

 

Making "corn angels"

After swimming through feed corn (yummy!), it was time to try our luck in the corn maze. I was a little nervous about taking the kids through a full-sized corn maze, since they'd never been in one before. But they were so excited that I decided to just "go with it" for a while.

At the entrance to both corn mazes (there was an "intermediate" and an "advanced" maze), employees handed out "clues" to navigating the maze. These clues consisted of knowing how many words were in a certain song, basic math problems, etc. Getting the problems right would ensure you would go in the right direction through the maze. Thanks to these clues, we solved the intermediate maze quite easily. We were flushed with confidence, and after a rest (a too-short rest, as it turned out!), everyone was ready to tackle the advanced maze.

This is all I saw for hours (well, it seemed like hours)

 

This proved to be an...unwise decision. The clues were the same in each maze, but the checkpoints at which the clues needed to be used were much harder to find in the advanced maze. The kids' "buzz" quickly wore off, and was gradually replaced by a feeling of exhausted desperation. More than one of the girls was heard to cry, "We're never going to get out of here!" "I'm THIRSTY," became another common refrain.

But at least the view from the lookout point was great, right?

 

Luckily, with a little patience and a little cheating (we sometimes followed other families who seemed more "confident" than ourselves. We NEVER cut through the corn though; that's for dirty filthy jerks!), we made it back out! The girls were less excited at the exit this time, and more relieved. Maybe if we do this again in the future, we'll do the difficult corn maze first, so the kids won't be so tired out by the end.

After a nice, long rest with lots of water (which I unfortunately had to walk back to the car and get), it was time to head over to the produce gardens and pick some vegetables!

No potatoes to dig for this year, unfortunately! Maybe the farm only plants that crop every few years. But there was still plenty of stuff to choose from. We ended up with about 25 pounds of tomatoes, lots of green bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, medium chile peppers, poblano peppers, cucumbers and spaghetti squash. It was mouth-watering just looking at some of that stuff!

Nice little "photo-op wagon" that the kids took full advantage of while I waited in line...

 

After finally purchasing all our produce (the line was loong, and Nathan had to add some of Apple Annie's jars of salsa to the order), it was 2:30 p.m. And we hadn't had any lunch yet! Time to fix that.

 

We headed over to the Apple Annie's orchard, and had a very late (but tasty!) burger lunch. With pie for dessert. Can't forget the pie...it's divine, and they serve it with a half-pint of ice cream on top! It didn't last long enough to photograph. It felt great to take a load off after walking for hours in the sun. We sat in the shade of some peach trees, munching our food and gathering strength for our last batch of produce-picking...

...in the Granny Smith portion of the orchard! Nathan and I had hoped their Pink Lady apples would be ready to pick, but unfortunately they wouldn't be ripe for another week or two. We love Granny Smith apples too, though, so we weren't too disappointed. After bending over in the warm sun for a couple of hours picking vegetables, standing in a shady orchard yanking low-hanging apples off the tree felt blissfully easy!

 

We got enough apples to fill our lunchboxes for several weeks, and it only took a few minutes of picking! After that, we took a small detour into the general store to buy a couple of extra treats. I picked out some apple pecan honey butter (yum!), and Nathan bought some fudge for the family to share. By now, my muscles were killing me...I admit I was not prepared for the amount of walking that I ended up doing! We were dirty, sweaty, tired, and sore...and very satisfied too.

The girls had fun playing "farmer" on these vintage tractors.

These were exactly the same kinds of tractors as the ones my grandpa used on his farm...

...so it warmed my heart to see the girls sitting atop them.

 

Our home was a welcome sight at the end of the day. I was too tired to cook, so we celebrated our return by eating fudge and cucumber slices for dinner. Very high-class! The next night, we ate some of the spaghetti squash with marinara sauce...the girls loved it. I am so glad they will eat squash for me. The next Monday was (thankfully) a day off work for Nathan, so he was able to watch Aurora while I "took care" of most of the rest of our picked produce...

...I made salsa out of it! We had been running pretty low on our home-prepared salsa, so I'm glad it's all done now. With luck, these jars will probably last us the next year.

So was it worth it to go to Apple Annie's later in the year? Yes and no. Yes, because the weather was gorgeous (it never rose above the low 80s while we were there). It was a genuine pleasure to be outside the whole day in weather like that. Also, the orchards were less stinky (the hot summer sun cooks whatever fruit falls onto the ground) and had fewer flies than in the summer.

On the other hand, the cooler weather meant that the crowds were much larger at both the orchard and the produce garden...but especially the produce garden, due to the corn maze and pumpkin patch being there. It never got unbearably crowded, but there was a lot more waiting in line than we were used to at Apple Annie's. Due to these crowds, there was also a little less produce available, especially in the vegetable gardens. I had to really search for the tomatoes at first!

All in all, I'd say it was a very fun trip, but not one I plan on doing every year. I still love to pick my peaches and pears at Apple Annie's, so that means we might be heading back to the orchard in the late summer next year, and then trying out a pumpkin patch a little closer to home later on. But I can see our family re-visiting Apple Annie's in October again at some future point...it really put us in the mood for fall!

Fall Break = Fun, But Not Much of a "Break"

Last week (October 7-11) was Fall Break for most Sahuarita schools. I am starting to find the word "break" to be a bit of a misnomer; it may be true that the kids are home from school, but there is no "break" from anything...we are as busy as ever that week! I still held half of my usual piano lessons that week, but we also spent a lot of time running errands (some horribly dull, some necessary) and goofing off. Here are the highlights:

Monday:  We started the week off with a bang (or maybe a "boing?"); we visited Get Air Tucson, the new trampoline gym in town. Not the most beautiful building I've ever seen, but it was pretty exciting inside. There were a lot of kids there, and some of the older ones were quite athletic. There was a lot of flipping and twisting mid-air, with kids literally bouncing off the walls. It was a little intimidating at first; I was worried how my younger girls would handle it.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried. Aurora ran like a maniac all over the place, bouncing and squealing with joy everywhere. She did occasionally stumble, and once or twice a larger kid ran into her or even knocked her over. None of this fazed her even a bit; I knew Aurora was tough, but this trip showed me that she is even tougher than I thought.

Lorelai and Celeste also had a great time, especially when it came to jumping/falling into huge piles of foam cubes...

...and walking on tightropes, only to quickly fall into more huge piles of foam cubes.

Get Air was a little on the expensive side, but the kids had a great time. So great in fact, that Celeste and Aurora both fell asleep in the car on the way home...and it was only mid-morning! We'll definitely visit again.

Tuesday: This was the "do-nothing" day for our family (relatively speaking). We did meet up with some friends at the playground in the morning, and we fed dinner to the sister missionaries that evening, but in between those events was a lot of luxuriant laziness (and a lot of TV).

Wednesday: A day filled with lots of tedious errands, plus a little bit of fun here and there. Mostly, I drove around voluminous piles of old kids' clothes, trying to trade them in for store credit at various second-hand clothing stores in Tucson (I particularly like Twice As Nice, where I've found some pretty stylish clothes for myself and for the girls). I went to four different branches of the store; I ended up getting about $30-40 in store credit, then promptly spent it all on winter clothes for the girls. Such is life.

In between the seemingly endless clothes shopping, we also took Lorelai in for her annual doctor's appointment (she's doing great!), ate a quick lunch at Wendy's, and stopped by the Reid Park Zoo to welcome its newest residents:

There are two grizzly bears (we only saw one that day; I suspect it was the female bear) who have taken up residence in the old polar bear habitat, now refurbished for its new occupants. It was cool to see bears at the zoo once again; sadly, one of the polar bears passed away, and the zoo has had to transfer all its other polar bears to different zoos. I hope we will have many years to see these grizzly bears and get to know them!

Thursday: Another day of errands, albeit not as extensive or exhausting. Besides the usual CostCo trip, it was shoe-shopping time for the girls. Now they are set for the winter with warmer shoes for both church and school. Celeste in particular got a pair of "fur"-lined loafers that she is particularly proud of; I don't know how my middle daughter manages to make everything look so cute & stylish, but she manages it all the time.

Celeste is rockin' the loafers here, along with making a silly face...

Friday: I know summer is over, but I still thought of this as a Friday Family Fun Day; plus, Daddy got to join in the fun this time! The reason? Tucson Meet Yourself (an annual folk life festival) was going on downtown all weekend...and it was happening right outside Nathan's office! We had attended this festival last year as well, and were wowed by the dozens of food stalls, representing as many countries. This year, we vowed to sample foods from several different countries; we'd buy one item at each stall and share it as a family. The results were fun and delicious!

We started at my personal favorite, the Russian food booth, run by Kalina Restaurant in northeast Tucson. We bought two piroshki, one stuffed with carrots and the other with cabbage.

The restaurant owner, who ran the booth, even gave me a small cup of borscht because she was impressed that I spoke Russian to her (broken, shaky Russian though it was)! We then took some obligatory photos of ourselves as matroshka nesting dolls:

Lots more delicious food followed, including these steamed pork buns (a Chinese treat):

The kids loved these buns; we probably could have fed them on these all day.

These were followed by a buttered baked potato from the Columbia booth, smothered with onions and peppers. A bit blander than we expected, but not bad overall. The kids liked it more than Nathan and I did.

We ate in the shadow of this lovely building...the Tucson City Courthouse.

We tried out some Swedish meatballs next:

Aurora loved the meatballs!

Then nearby, we discovered a booth representing Thai cuisine. Time to try a chicken satay skewer!

This was Nathan's favorite food of the day. The meat was tender and well-seasoned, nutty and spicy. It has convinced him to try more Thai food. Thank goodness for that...I have been telling Nathan for years that Thai food was delicious. I guess he had to discover it for himself. Either way, now I can probably convince him to take me out for some Thai food for my birthday or another special occasion. Yay!

Time to go in search of more food!

...or just peer deep into the fountain, whatever. An evil part of me wanted to sneak up behind the girls and give them a tiny shove...

Next was the Greek booth, where I bought a gyro sandwich to share.

Right after that, Nathan headed for the El Guero Canelo booth. What's a multicultural food festival without a delicious Sonoran hot dog to share? That booth was (understandably) a little busy, so while we waited for Nathan to order, we took in an impromptu tango lesson offered at one of the many stages set up throughout the festival.

When Nathan brought over the Sonoran dog, it didn't last long. They never do.

By now, our bellies were pleasantly full and we'd done a lot of nice walking around on a warm, sunny day. It was time to wrap things up with dessert!

These are a sweet pastry called "aebleskiver"; they were offered at the Danish booth. They are a national delicacy, and are properly cooked in a special aebleskiver pan. They puff up as they cook, and their consistency and flavor is somewhere between a pancake and a donut. They were served dusted with powdered sugar, with red currant jam for dipping. They were incredibly delicious; now I think I have to ask for an aebleskiver pan for Christmas.

We wrapped up our day (and our Fall Break) by inviting our next-door neighbors the Gillespies over for dinner and a board game. They are LDS like us--we attend the same ward, in fact. They are very funny and sweet (plus their three kids are adorable). We have been too busy to get together properly the last few months, but it was great to hang out with them and get to know them better. Hopefully there will be more nights like that in our future.

We still had one more weekend left until school resumed...and what a busy weekend it was! In fact, it was a weekend deserving of its own blog post, so I'll stop here for now.