We drove over the mountain pass to Watsonville this past weekend to pick apples. Watsonville neighbors our town but we're separated by mountains so it takes about 20 minutes to get there driving up and over. Anna is not a fan of those windy switchbacks but she survived. We went to the Martinelli's company store first. You may know Martinelli's from their world famous sparkling apple cider. Well, they are located in Watsonville, CA.
They have a tasting bar in the Martinelli's store. We got a menu of all the different varieties they have and got to try as many as we wanted. We ended up trying about 75% of them. The kids marked off which kinds they like the most. This is all non-alcoholic of course.
Hey, if you see a kind you would like on here but can't find locally, let us know.
We know where to go!
The kids recorded which kinds they liked the most and we bought several bottles of favorites to take home. It was so fun. As boring as it sounds I think my favorite was the sparkling apple grape. Along with the red and white grape juice. I guess I really like grape juice. The apple pear was also really nice. The kids liked apple peach and apple mango plus the apple pear and grape juice. It was all very good.
After Ghirardelli's we headed to Gizdich Ranch, a Watsonville apple (among other things) farm. They also grow berries and are famous for their pies. The line for pies was super long and we know from experience if you go too late in the day there aren't many pie varieties left. We came another time and had pie. So good! But no pie this time. Grant had gone on a field trip to this apple farm just the day before so he showed us all the things they did, including playing on this big hay bale pyramid.
We told the kids to share buckets. Grant said he would share with John and held his hand.
They had four different varieties available for picking and we chose to pick Newtown Pippin apples.
Anna helped Emma find some apples.
It is normal for them to be brown on the top like that.
A lot of the low hanging fruit was already picked so Scott helped the kids get some of the higher apples. It pays to be tall for apple picking.
John got a winner. Thanks dad!
It didn't take long before we had plenty of apples - we're still trying to figure out what to do with them!! I think we'll be making applesauce soon...or delivering a lot of apple crisps to people. We tried not to pick too many. :)
Anna by the orchard
helping Emma
And just goofing around at the ranch
An old tractor to climb on. Can't pass that up!
We had a great time at the ranch.
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