Old McRiley Visits A Farm

E - I - E - I - O!  This weekend, Chris had a great idea to go apple picking!  We went to the same farm where we went last year and decided to space out our farming activities - apple picking in September and pumpkin picking in October.  

The visit started with a stop at the petting zoo where Riley said hi to the goats, ran away from the chickens and tried to wake up the pig.  He was a little nervous the whole time and didn't love the idea of getting too close to the animals.  He did, however, like to hear all the noises they made!

Once we made it to the orchard, it was time to fill up our bag.  The Gala apples were in season, but we started in the wrong lane and filled up half of the bag with another variety - but those are the ones we all like anyways.  So once we covered up our mistake with the correct apples, we took a walk through the field and of course, found some diggers to watch for a while.

We were real professionals and took time picking the best apples and tasting a few here and there to make sure they were really the ones we wanted.  Hal way through one apple, Riley saw another one on the ground that looked better, so he put his down and picked up the new one.  Luckily that was not one of the apples that had been living not he ground for a week, stomped on and feeding a family of ants...

When the picking frenzy was complete, we headed back to the store to check out the rest of the crop.  Riley wanted to inspect the quality of the mini pumpkins and in order to do a thorough job, he had to get in and really take a look at the product.  In the end, he approved of the pumpkins and had to be dragged away.  We came home with a half bushel of tomatoes that has thus far been turned into pasta sauce, chili and gifts to neighbors and family.  Anyone have any suggestions of what to do with the remaining 14 tomatoes?