Apples, Apples and Even More Apples!

We don't live in North Carolina anymore so there won't be fall trips to the mountains for apples but one fun thing about Illinois I have discovered is there are some GREAT apple orchards here! A few weekends ago, we headed 45 minutes west to Harvard, IL and the Royal Oak Farm and Orchard. The neat thing about this specific farm is that it is owned by a Christian family and they unashamedly display scripture verses and crosses all over the farm from the gift shop to the restaurant to the barns. Everyone was super nice and there were a million things to do besides pick apples. They had a pumpkin patch, a petting zoo, fun climbing toys, a carosel, a train the kids could ride, a gift shop and a wonderful restaurant. We had beautiful weather and were there all morning but still didn't have the chance to do everything.

We arrived as soon as they opened and decided to pick apples first as we knew the apple fields would get busy as the morning wore on. Well actually, we stopped at the gift shop first to eat an apple cider donut. Had to have some energy to pick all those apples! Because the apple fields are so spread out, they give you a map of where all the different kinds of apples are and take you out on a tractor to the field of your choice (Sarai wasn't too sure about the tractor at first but she eventually enjoyed the ride). But Sarai LOVED picking apples and eating them straight off the tree! Mike even picked her up so she could reach the high ones. A little more than an hour and a huge bag of apples later, we decided it was time to find us a few pumpkins. We picked out three, a daddy one, a mommy one and a baby one. They are quite cute sitting on our front porch. By this time, we had gotten hungry again (apple cider donuts were gone) and we headed into the restaurant for a home cooked meal. Sarai had homemade mac and cheese, Mike had a BBQ sandwich and I had chicken pot pie. It was all wonderful and I'm sure I gained a couple pounds :-) By the time we finished eating, we were getting close to Sarai's naptime but we wanted to check out some of the other things for her to do before we headed home. She spent some time playing on the climbing toys and then checked out the goats, cows, geese, and turkeys at the petting zoo. She didn't pet anything though. She's so funny. She loves animals in theory but as soon as they are alive and in front of her, she is singing a different tune. By now, she was starting to get whiney so we knew our time at the farm was coming to a close. Of course, she didn't nap at all on the way home but we had such a great morning, Mike and I didn't mind :-)