Ernie Appleseed

Zoe made Ernie this pretty sweet sweater in case we ever forget his name.

Today we drove out to Snohomish, Washington. There were some ski diver parachute types.

I will admit that I was not super excited to visit Raising Cane Ranch. I just think picking fruit in general is borderline a waste of time. But I was super wrong about it this time and it was a really fun experience.

First of all these people were like apple scientists. They had a ton of different types. My memory of doing this as a kid was that the apples were pretty boring types. I also remember the trees being so tall you needed a ladder, but here they were glorified bushes which made picking them a lot less annoying. It was also cute that this was a little family operation. This was the guy's mom working the table.

They had numerous types of apple that I had never even heard of before. This is pretty much what I wish every self picking experience could be like. I want to see something new!

Ashmead's Kernel is a pretty exotic name for an apple variety. I think fruit varieties are actually kind of fascinating. I think about what types of fruit are in the supermarket and why. It's not necessarily because they taste the best. Maybe they bruise less easily in shipping or ripen faster. Some industrial reason rather than what is best for my mouth. Pawpaws for example would never be in a supermarket, one reason being that the peel doesn't change color when they ripen. So it's hard to know when to eat them. And they have massive seeds. Anyway. Fruits are fun.

They tied my poor son's hair into a man bun.

This was him wishing his hair was back to normal, I think.

I actually read that Lydia ate so many apples without paying that the orchard had to close down. Very sad.

I found Big Ern a tiny apple prop.

I don't think he really figured out how to eat an apple but he enjoyed licking them.

I knew there was a cidery before we started picking apples. Maybe I asked the guy if I could buy a cider to sip while we picked and he said yes, then I went to buy it and his wife was kind of rude about it and said no. This state has an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. Anyway it was funny because I had a long conversation about the cider business with the dude and I remember thinking "I really like this guy" and it turned out he was from Minnesota or something. I never appreciated the benefits of Midwest culture until I left.

Whenever I see scrumpy on a menu I think of British Mike. We did a lovely road trip around Cornwall and Devonshire and scrumpy was a highlight. I bestowed several cider-made-from-fallen-apples nicknames upon his family's British bulldog including Scrumpy, Scrum, or the more respectful Mr. Scrumperton.

The cider was so good I bought a growler full to take home.

Ernie's burgeoning ability to roll is a bit of a scary thing. He's doing the whole thing backwards in that he's learning to roll back to front first whereas most babies do the opposite. Once he's rolled onto his belly he is unable to roll back. Well up until now we've followed the easy to remember rule of IF HE SLEEPS ON HIS BELLY THE WORLD WILL END, but now that he is able to roll to his belly himself.. that seems to be ok? We can't exactly stop him from doing it.