peter piper picked a peck of empire apples

yesterday we went to chudleigh's apple farm for a mock field trip that jeremy had to plan as part of his school work. i love jeremy's school work! it's a pretty busy place and we might have been the only two without children but we picked some apples and saw a camel so all in all, a success.

it's weird that there is a camel at an apple farm, right? this is molson the camel. everywhere there were signs telling you not to feed apples to molson but that did not stop molson from eating apples like there was no tomorrow. or like tomorrow might bring a serious shortage of apples.

a hay bale maze! we love mazes. and fall. and this little person in the background whose existence was marked by a moving red balloon.


we learned from the website when we got home that you could eat as many apples as you please and pay only for the ones you wanted to take home. had we known that we would have skipped a few meals beforehand and stocked up for winter.


pretend pumpkin patch set up for show. i had to sneak this photo in the two-second-gap between family photo shoots of babes in multi-coloured crocheted hats.


there was a petting zoo with goats and deers and donkeys and you could feed them pellets from an ice cream cone only everyone looked full except the goats who must just have a very fast metabolism.




there was a nature trail tucked away at the back of the orchard, a treat for those without strollers or time constraints, and i found myself wishing we'd come earlier to just sit in this meadow and try to catch the leaves change. it was magical. a magical meadow.

there was an actual real pumpkin patch back there with gigantic pumpkins on vines and a wall of coloured trees.

jeremy pointed to a rotten pumpkin and said 'this one's my favourite' and i said 'it would be easy to carve' and he said 'you could just use scissors' and we laughed at each other.


this last picture's blurry but i kept it in cause it comes with a story. this was the moment i lost my purse. only i didn't realize i lost my purse here, i realized it when we were lining up to pay for the 6 apples we picked and i started to melt down.

we checked in the car, we came back to the farm, we ran up and down the rows of apple trees and by the ladder and by the camel and by the goat and i thought for sure it was gone. and though i know it's just stuff and it's all replaceable and none of it matters, i cried. i held it in for as long as i could but someone drove by on a tractor and asked if we were okay and i said no, i've lost my purse.

and there was only one more place to look, the nature trail by the mushroom log, and that's where it was waiting for me, wondering if i'd find it or if it would have to spend the night alone in the woods.

people say not to sweat the small stuff and those people, i think, haven't lost their purses at chudleigh's apple farm and felt the panic of being in a sea of people who don't care about what you've misplaced.

but the good news is there's jeremy, who cares so much, and is there to hold your hand while you run looking through the lanes of the apple orchard.