green acres

We went to Apple Hill last weekend for some autumn fun. Apple Hill is a growers association with over 50 farms and ranches, including produce, Christmas trees, wineries and vineyards. Some of the ranches have you pick apples, pumpkins, or other produce and there are several that have fun things for kids like hayrides, animal feeding, etc. Knowing that getting Little Miss J in and out of the car can be challenging, we tried to identify which farms we wanted to go to based on the best kids activities.

The first one was kind of a bust and we didn't even get out of the car because it didn't look that fantastic. Gus got suckered in by all the pretty flowers and made us get out at Bill's Apples, which turned out only had pretty flowers to offer. There was a general store with some junk crafts and trinkets and stuff, but other than that it was just a pretty place to look at. Admittedly, it was beautiful, but it was not worth the crying when we had to strap Little Miss J back in the carseat. Of course, third time was the charm.

We finally arrived at Apple Ridge! Petting zoo and you pick pumpkin patch. Little Miss J loves animals so the first thing we did was go to the petting zoo, where there actually wasn't a whole lot of petting going on since all the animals were behind fences. But for 50 cents you could get a cup of food to feed the goats. Despite trying to show Little Miss J how to hold her palm open so the goats could eat, she insisted on feeding the goat one pellet at a time. Painstaking, for both me and the goat apparently. The goat would eventually get bored because the rate of food was so slow that he'd wander off - leaving a little girl with her hand stuck through the fence yelling, "goat goat! HERE GOAT!"

Then it was time for pumpkin picking. To my embarrassment, Little Miss J was picking up pumpkins and throwing them like she was competing for the world's strongest toddler title.

After pumpkins, Little Miss J made a break for the goats again so we repeated the painstaking process of feeding a goat one pellet at a time.

We didn't actually get any apples at Apple Hill, but we did get three pumpkins, probably some gross germs from feeding/petting goats, and shared a delicious Apple Ridge sundae, which was warm apple cider doughnut, ice cream, whipped cream, and really yummy caramel sauce.