This week has been gorgeous, and my mom is visiting from Pennsylvania, so we decided to take her on a mini farm tour. We took her to BelleWood Acres (she's been there before and loves it), then Appel Farms and finally Boxx Berry Farm.
We got to BelleWood Acres at 10 AM when they opened and started with the store. We grabbed a few of their free recipes and tried some samples of apple syrup (yum!). Then we walked around and saw where apples are cleaned and processed, as well as where they are juiced.
We had hoped to grab a golf cart for our own little tour, but there was a group using all of them, so we walked (and the kids ran) down the rows admiring the apples and enjoying the fresh air. Once the kids were good and tired from that, we got a wagon and some paper bags and headed over to the honeycrisp rows to pick a few of our own to take home. We also picked up some BelleWood Bubbly, their new sparkling cider, and some traditional cider.
[caption id="attachment_6997" align="aligncenter" width="199" caption="Picking honeycrisp at BelleWood Acres farm"]
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From BelleWood Acres, we headed over to Appel Farms and had samples of cheddars, goudas and squeaky cheese. My kids loved the bacon cheddar, though I ended up buying some of the squeaky cheese for them. Once I realized my children seemed to think this was their lunch break (read: they were eating all of the cheese samples), I took them outside to admire the cows while my mom finished her sampling and shopping.
[caption id="attachment_6996" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The kids outside of the Appel Farms store. The dog - Callie - wouldn't move out of the picture, and I think she even posed for it!"]
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Our last stop was to Boxx Berry Farm to pick some pumpkins. We've been going to Boxx for the past few years and really love it. They offer wagons for hauling pumpkins - or kids, a self weigh and pay station, a farm store, a playground (yes, a playground!) and on weekends or if it's busy (we lucked out as there was a school group visiting), the owner has a tractor that pulls a barrel train and the kids can go for a free (FREE!) ride.
[caption id="attachment_6995" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Train ride at Boxx Berry Farm"]
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We spent about 2 hours farm hopping and it was a great way to spend the pre-lunch hours. The kids got fresh air, experienced different types of farms, got good snacks and when we got home, they napped hard. :)
Below is a map of our mini-tour if you'd like to check out the farms we visited.
[mappress mapid="35"]
