Apple and Berry Picking

A few weekends ago we drove up to Santa Cruz to go apple picking at Swanton Pacific Ranch. The apple orchard is run by Cal Poly and is totally no-frills - you pick as many apples as you want, weigh them, and then leave the money in the cash box. They had lots of varieties and there were signs at the end of each aisle indicating the type of apple and its ripeness. We had fun tasting the different apples and comparing how they tasted. As usual, our favorites were the fujis.

Colin got the hang of picking apples off the tree pretty quickly. Then he realized that it was much easier to just pick them up off the ground. He kept finding the bruised and rotten ones so we had to keep making sure that he didn't try to eat them.

As we were leaving the apple farm, we drove past a U-pick strawberry field and figured what the heck, we might as well go pick some strawberries too. There were so many strawberries! Mommy told me to just pick the biggest, reddest ones I could find, hoping to slow me down a little. Colin just ran up and down the aisles, happily munching on his berries.