I love any and all of the traditional Fall fun activities– picking apples, picking pumpkins, drinking cider, eating cider doughnuts, sneezing through hayrides, running through corn mazes, you name it. The brisk air, the smell of wood fires, the pleasant dankness of wet fallen leaves, the cinnamon&nutmeg-spiced everything…Really helps to fight off any looming autumnal melancholy.
This year the apple harvest in the Hudson Valley was a bit unpredictable, mostly due to odd weather patterns and some other factors. Many of the apple varieties had peaked early, so when we made it up there, we had already missed the Empires, Mutsus, and Cortlands. Happily, the Braeburns were still hanging on, and we filled our bags with these crunchy sweet beauties.
Wrights Farm (Gardiner, NY) was sprawling and gorgeous, with a wonderful farm market with all kinds of homemade jams and pickles and best of all, cinnamon-sugar-encrusted soft cakey cider doughnuts.
And luckily, no little green worms or ornery trees…
