Apple Hill

Yesterday we went to Apple Hill near Placerville. It was an idea given to us by Erik's best friend--thanks! I was so excited to pick organic apples. All they had was golden delicious, which I don't like to eat out of hand, but I can cook with them.

So we showed up at our first stop, Willow Pond Organic Farm. There were a lot of kids there. We went to the barn-like structure and browsed the fruits and veggies for sale. We saw some yellow tomatoes that were not glossy, a first for us. They seemed unlike tomatoes, almost other-woldly.

I asked the worker, "Is there apple picking today?" She gave me a holy tote bag, and Erik took a long pole with a clawed, padded basket on top. She said we had half an hour. So we walked quickly up the road to where the golden delicious are. We picked quickly. I tried the pole once, and I wasn't so good at it. Erik was adept. I got what I thought was about six pounds of apples, and they're a dollar a pound.

Surprisingly, picking those apples only took ten minutes. She weighed them at 3.8 pounds. Oops--my weight estimation was way off. I paid, and we left with a paper bag of apples.

We sat by Willow Pond for a little while. Erik watched small brown birds (LBJs). A little girl stared at me, and I don't know why. She was eating an apple.

But I was in a hurry. I wanted to make sure we didn't miss the cider apple donuts. Our next stop was the Fudge Factory. (Did you make jokes about the fudge factory, milk machine, and lemonade stand when you were a kid?) There was another pond near the fudge factory, and a guy was fishing there. There were all kinds of booths with people selling stuff--art, flattened wine bottles, soap. The soap was the only thing that interested me, but it probably wasn't vegan, and I don't need any soap anyway.

Then we went to Rainbow Orchard. It has a big rainbow painted on the side of the building. They have all kinds of winter squash, beautiful ones. But we were there for the freshly baked, baked to order, apple cider donuts. We ordered two--they gave us four, two bonus donuts because they were small. They put the donuts in a white waxed paper bag. We ate them right away at a picnic table. They were as good as I was hoping.

Then we headed to a fourth place, which was nearby, but by then my brain was full, and I didn't feel like shopping anymore. So we saw a huge wooden mill wheel turning from a trickle of water and just drove by, heading home.

It was a great afternoon, and I wish I'd known we had plenty of time so we could have lingered near ponds. But we didn't get lost even once, and I would like to go back to Apple Hill.