Apple Picking

We went apple picking yesterday. Since the apples at the u-pick place were $1.19/lb, and the apples from an orchard near my parents' house are $16/bushel (a bushel is 40+ lbs, do the math!!!) or $8/bushel for seconds (which means trimming a spot out now & then, many of them are "seconds" because there's no stem, which doesn't affect anything except how long they'll keep). This was definitely filed under "educational experiences" NOT "frugal shopping" LOL. But the girls had a blast & would have happily picked apples for quite abit longer than we did. Conveniently, the apple variety I wanted was small trees that included branches that were literally inches from the ground. And apparently had, up until that point, been picked by people about my height. The low branches were still loaded, as were the tops of the trees, the branches I could easily reach w/o squatting to the ground or standing on tiptoe were pretty sparse. So it worked great, plenty of apples the kids could reach, and at that price, I wasn't doing much picking anyway LOL.

We also got apple cider while we were there (yum!) AND the most exciting part of the trip for me, the little "market" there had raw honey for prices I'm willing to pay!!! I'd about given up, I got raw honey from the same farm I got raw milk from when we lived in our old house, and all the prices I was finding here were at least double what I'd paid there. I was hesitant to just keep buying it there (though we go w/in a mile of that farm when we drive to/from my parents' house so it's not a big deal to stop there), because I prefer truely LOCAL raw honey for the added protection against environmental allergens (bees make honey out of local wildflowers, that's the same pollen that's floating in the air making people sneeze, if they eat the pollen as honey, they're less likely to react to the pollen in the air, at least that's how I understand it . . . I think it's the same principal as homeopathics?) , although so far the only one in our family who has any environmental allergies is dh & he doesn't eat honey (or anything else sweet) anyway. But still . . . I was excited to find local raw honey for only slightly more than what I'd been paying before.

So it was a rather expensive day all around, but the girls had fun LOL.