Friday, September 5, 2014

Apple Festival 2014

I am pretty sure this is one of my favorite weekends of the whole year. I plan my work schedule around it and we never miss this weekend....Apple Festival in Hendersonville, NC. We always go to pick apples as well. This year we got to take Sutton and when I found out I was pregnant with Sutton I just couldn't wait for the apple festival weekend!
 
 Of course I had to buy her an outfit for her first visit to the apple orchard!
 
 We always go to Skytop Orchard but I had read about some orchard that have the cow train and knew it would be a hit for Craw. Boy was I right...the next day I asked him about his favorite part of the day and of course he said the cow train. He just had to sit in the back train. We went to Grandad's Orchard and it was really nicely organized and I loved it. The train ride was about 7 minutes through part of the orchard and Craw and his cousins loved it. They also got to feed goats which they thought was pretty cool.


Inside the barn was an adorable bakery. They had apple cider slushies, apple cider donuts, apple fritters, apple turnovers, fried apple pies, apple and caramel cookies (and they cut samples of all this plus the apples). It was apple heaven (the donuts at Skytop are much better though)
They only had a few varieties available for us to physically go pick. However, with 3 wild kids running through the trees it was just the perfect amount of Upick  before we were grateful to go pick from the apple bins. We all got a peck of apples (10 pounds of apples for $10) and it was fun to select from the bins and fill our bags to the top.



 After picking apples, Brad, Amy, Brian, Janet, Joretta, and the kids went through the corn maze. It was really hot out so it didn't last too long but it would be great to visit this orchard again in October.

After spending a few hours at the orchard (I am glad we switched it up and went to the orchard first because it wasn't crowded until we were getting ready to leave), we headed towards downtown Hendersonville to the Apple Festival. I prefer to go to the festival on Sat/Sun because they have performers on the stage and tons of vendors in tents selling a variety of things. On Monday, they have the apple festival parade so lot of vendors pack up and leave so all that's left is carnival type food and the carnival rides. It seems to get hotter each year we go. The kids wanted to ride all the rides while the adults were searching for shade. I wish this festival was just a few weekends later when the weather would make the whole experience more enjoyable.


Craw loved squeezing in some fun on the carnival rides.
 
It's one tradition we never miss and it is just one of my favorite things to do as a family. We are now enjoying all of the apples we picked and searching for fun apple recipes!

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