Picking apples

Today was our first field trip. Ever. We joined our homeschooling group for a tour of a local apple orchard and came away full of cider, donuts, and good, fall fun. Our group is large enough that we divided by age, us belonging to the group of young children, of course. We took a tour of the enormous fridge full of apples (that's a big fridge, and actually that many apples in storage don't smell all that good—apple overload), then we got to watch them run the press used for making cider, and the sorter used to wash and, of course, sort the apples by size after they are brought in from the field.

The tour was standard—exactly the kind of field trip I remember from my own school years, complete with donut, cider, and coloring books. I loved the guide, who talked about how important the bees were and encouraged the kids to be respectful of their presence, not freaked. She also shared a number of interesting nature and apple tidbits with the kids before setting us loose on the orchard and allowing us to pick five apples each. At 85 degrees it wasn't exactly fall-like, but they had beautiful trees that made me happy, and Calvin got a real kick out of picking the apples.

In his words: