Legacy of Little Things: Frugal Friday-Field trip to the Apple Farm

When I first moved to Portland, I lived in Beaverton, but worked in Hillsboro. After several weeks of sitting in morning traffic and waiting at traffic lights, one of my co-workers found out about my route and asked me why I wasn't taking the "back way."

The "back way" turned out to be my best friend. It's a two-lane, no traffic road that winds through farms, orchards, and peaceful country landscapes and then suddenly pops you out onto a main road in Hillsboro. For me, it was home. And it was the perfect way to unwind after a day spent with my crazy, precious little students. And their crazy, wonderful parents. And the eight pounds of paperwork I had to complete each day.

One of the beautiful farms on this road is called Oregon Heritage Farms. It's primarily an apple farm, but they add in hay rides, a pumpkin patch, a big blow up apple bounce house, barn animals, and a little gift shop with antiques and cutesy local crafts during the height of their season.

I stopped there to get pumpkins and fall decorations for my class that first year in Portland and have been going back ever since.

Since Natalie and I have been learning our "A" verse this week and learning all about the letter "A", today we decided to take a little field trip out to the apple farm. We prefaced the event by coloring letter "A" apple pictures.

Natalie must think green and red apples are boring, because her apples turned out to be rainbow colored. I'm pretty sure she used every single colored marker we have. (This took an incredibly long time. We were completely ready to go at this point, so I just sat there watching, doing my best not to make too many, "Okay, honey are you all done now? We're going to the apple farm remember? When you're all done, we get to go" comments. To which she'd glance briefly my way, look back at her coloring and announce which color would be next. Apparently, she had some inner-knowledge that the apple farm wasn't goin' anywhere.)

Once we finally had our apple pictures done and up on her bulletin board, we grabbed our snacks and our camera and headed out. It's pretty early in apple season, so unfortunately there were only two types of apples available. One was a really tart apple, not great for snacking, and the other was Honey Crisp. Honey Crisp is one of my favorites, but also pretty expensive for apples. The kind worker let me know that they aren't yet at the peak of their season, so they're not quite as sweet as they normally are. We got to taste samples and they were both pretty sour. We ended up deciding to come back in a few weeks when there were more varieties for apples, but left with a jar of delicious apple butter.

Walking around the rest of the farm was a blast. I clicked away while Natalie petted the goats, explored the tractor, and blew "wishes"on dandelions. I made her pose for a couple pictures, which ended up costing me a dum-dum sucker. (Maybe not parenting at it's best...but man the pictures came out cute!)