For the past couple years my friend MC and I have been wanting to go apple picking. For some reason or another we always seem too busy at the apple picking time of year. This year we were determined to make it and we coordinated a month in advance with our “Cooking Club” and a date was set! I checked the website and saw that they had a wide variety of apples at the farm, checked yelp and saw glowing reviews from people about their apple picking fun.
Why then when we got to the Apple Farms in Oak Glen, CA- did they tell us that there were no apples to pick? Turns out that this year due to weather there was not a stellar crop of apples, so it seems that only the first handful of cars that arrive actually get to pick some apples. SO SAD!!!! Not to worry, we turned the day around and made some fresh apple cider! The farm also had u-pick pumpkins, raspberries, strawberries and flowers, however I think we all had our hearts set on the apples.
The apple cider making was the highlight of our trip to Oak Glen…. You simply purchase a ticket at the General Store and you are set to make your own gallon of apple cider. First picking the apples from a bin, then pressing the cider!
Somehow making the apple cider yourself makes it taste AH-Mazing! Our cider dude was super nice and had a sarcastic sense of humor. He told me he hadn’t seen anyone crank the apple cider mill as fast before, other than the 7 year old girl that came last week. LOL damm!!! While we didn’t get apples that we picked ourselves, we did hit the general store for an apple turnover, some apple butter, pumpkin butter and cinnamon apple jelly.
Since our day was cut short without the actual apple picking, we did what any city girls would do and decided that we should hit the outlets since we just 30 minutes away. The day was a success and we each went home with a bounty of Fall goods, (Fashion not apples!).
