à la croisée des pommes

On a particularly sunny weekend we made our way to an orchard just outside of Montreal to pick apples.  Armed with a 10 pound bag each, we boarded the tractor-limo and were led into the trees  After a quick briefing on the correct apple picking technique (pull upwards, rather than twisting, so as not to remove the stem and allow air into the apple), we headed out to hunt for the perfect lobo and mcintosh apples.  Having never heard of lobo apples before, we were pleasantly surprised when they lived up the description of "like mcintosh, but better in every way".

We spent the next few hours climbing ladders, filling our bags with apples (and sneaking a few extra into our backpack), and having a delicious picnic in the shade.  There were a couple of animals milling about the farm and eating the fallen apples. When we got home, I checked the sticker on our granny smith apples to see where they were from - South Africa! It's crazy that I could take a short little train ride and eat apples fresh from the tree and yet I've been buying these ones that have been on quite the journey. Now we've got 20+ pounds of apples, so we can rest easy knowing that we're minimizing our carbon footprint (well, for a little while - got any good apple recipes?)

We marked the end of summer last night by seeing Kid Koala and Arcade Fire (!!) I'll post photos from the show soon... Happy autumn!