We made our annual fall orchard trip this week. We picked a peck of apples, selected five pumpkins, petted chickens and heard a donkey’s bray for the first time.
This year we went to Whistling Well Farms, one of several orchards near the St. Croix River between Afton and Hastings. We have also been to two other orchards in the area — McDougall’s Apple Junction and Afton Apple. (Read my post about the Afton Apple corn maze and see scrapbook pages from the past three years at the end of this post.)
Whistling Well sells mums, gourds, Indian corn, corn stalks and straw bales in addition to the pumpkins and apples. McDougall’s has mums as well but I don’t think they have the other items. They do have a few more activities for kids, like a giant pile of straw bales to climb, a small playground, rubber duck races and an apple launcher. They also have a corn maze but we have not done it.
Whistling Well and McDougall’s both have some animals. Here is Connor, after many minutes of petting the chickens, suddenly backing away and quietly saying, “You’re not going to eat me, are you?”
And of course, both have plenty of apples to pick, food concessions on weekend and stores with goodies like jam, cider and caramel apples.
Our 2008, 2009 and 2010 fall orchard outings:
[...] carved three of the five pumpkins we bought at Whistling Well. The big kids drew their designs in dry erase marker and Mark carved them. He did Ellie’s [...]