We had one of those weekends where we worked crazy hard. I dismantled the bean fort and saved all the materials, set up a compost system (more on that this week), we raked lots of leaves, and ordered our own blueberry bushes (trying to keep the traffic fine costs down).
We also visited this beautiful apple orchard.
The orchard is over 100 years old, and sits at a very large lake about 15 minutes north of our lake. (A lake SO BIG, they don’t have to worry about all of those turns.) The current owner’s great grandfather planted the apple trees. (And he is a grandfather himself now.) 
There were no dwarf apple trees like you find in most orchards today — this one was full of large apple trees.
Mushrooms are supposed to grow abundantly around apple orchards. Thinking I had hit the mother lode for this spring, I asked him if he found mushrooms around here?
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess some people really go nuts about them and know what they’re doing… Morrells, isn’t that what you like?”
“Yeah. That’s what we like. I found 7… just 7 last year. One from the car window.”
“Well, if we see ‘em, we just churn ‘em up while we’re working, because we don’t even know what they’re supposed to look like.”
“Sometimes we see a big patch of ‘em just standing in the middle of the field,” he said.
I have yet to see such a specimen of beauty.
Apples were $.40 a pound; weighed on the old-fashioned scale.
We’ll be back in the spring, just to check in on our friend, the apple grower, and those apple blossoms.
BEAUTIFUL post. Look at those trees!
We have a gorgeous old apple tree in our backyard, but it’s past its prime.
Oh what a treasure! A gorgeous apple orchard!
Oh fun!
Apples are so expensive here! $12 for a 10 lb bag!