Country apple blessings

Hello again,

I'm so sorry that I've not posted anything for quite some time.  This summer has gotten away from me.

I'm ashamed to admit that most of July was spent in worry/anxiety.  I got notice for jury duty up in Scranton.  I wouldn't mind serving jury duty, except that I would have to drive into Scranton by myself.  I feel as though I must have mentioned it before, but driving sort of terrifies me.  If I never had to drive a car again, I would be okay with that.  At any rate, I mostly laid low...well, I felt as though I did, although we had tons going on! 

In fact, this has been one of the busiest summers I remember. 
My parents came out to visit 4th of July weekend, and my mother in law was in that weekend, too.  Two weeks later, we were off to visit my hubby's cousins in Virginia Beach.  Whew!  That place is crowded!  (We had a great time, though!!)  We had a week or two off again before more visitors came our way, my company picnic, my brother and new sister-in-law's wedding reception, and plenty of picnics, family get togethers, and lots of warm weather in between! 

Whew!  It's nice to have had two weekends in a row where we didn't have any plans.  In two weeks, we will be leaving to go on our vacation- which is really just a trip home to my mom and dad's house.  We'll be stopping at Chapman State Park first.  We'll stay two nights there in a camping cottage and hopefully catch up with a friend we haven't seen for a couple years. 

Next, we're heading down my parent's home, where we are planning on visiting with my family, and as a special treat, we booked a 1 day Anderson Bus trip.  It's called "Brown Bag Amish tour" and we'll be touring all sorts of Amish homes and businesses in Holmes County, Ohio.  At each stop, we get another free goodie for our brown bags!  Doesn't that sound like fun?  I know I am looking forward to it.  In addition to this, we're dragging the boat behind us and I'm sure my husband will be thrilled to fish Pymatuning, Conneaut Lake, and Presque Isle. 

After that, we're traveling to Tionesta, where we'll be meeting up with my Mother-in-law and we'll stay at my family's camp to celebrate her birthday.  I hope that we'll have a fun time and I know we're both looking forward to the trip! 

Anyway, that's what I've been up to lately!

So, here's the focus of my blog post today...

Do you have a park nearby?  Have you looked around at all?  Some of the parks in our area are loaded with apple trees that produce quite nice fruit.  They are tall and it's not like you can just climb up and pick the apples, but I do walk around and pick up the "drops" to make applesauce with. 

I'm sure not every place is the same, but our park has almost 12 old apple trees.  Some produce a lot of fruit and some produce...well, not very much.  At any rate, it's been a blessing to have a little early applesauce.

I would recommend checking with the park before you just go ahead and start picking apples in case they use them for some sort of demonstration (cider pressing, etc) but ours told us it was okay to just go ahead and pick up whatever we wanted. 

This was a wonderful find and a great free resource. 

I hope that you'll be able to find something similar where you live.

Have a wonderful day and may God Bless you, reader!  :)