Farming...

One of the things we wanted to do over the long weekend was go to the apple orchard. We have two that we like, the apples are wonderful. But there isn't a WHOLE lot more then apples. Well, they DO have corn mazes but those don't open until October. So I googled apple orchards in our area. There were 38. 38! We live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. If you've never been to MN, our Capital is St. Paul, which has a slightly larger more hip "sister" called Minneapolis. There are many SUBburbs surrounding these to "twin" cities. The Mall of America for example is in the CITY of Bloomington, which is SOUTH of the "twin cities". I live NORTH of the twin cities, yet I still live IN the twin cities. So you see 38 orchards in the CITIES, that is a lot of options. I had two things I was looking for:
1) The brand new Hybrid apple the SweeTango. It is a cross between the Honeycrisp (Which was bred here in MN) and the Zestar.
I remember reading about it in the paper, they had a naming contest, and the winner of that contest got to be one of the first of the "public" to try it. That was a year or two ago. I have been thinking about this apple for two years?!?!?!
2) It needed to have something else to do then JUST apples.

We decided to go to Fall Harvest Orchard. They have a working farm. You can get up close and personal with the animals, the have hayrides through the crops, pick your own apples and the SweeTango! It was an hour from our house. We packed up the kids and the dvd player and went for a drive. As we drove in we passed a winery that was having an art festival and wine tasting, we'd hit that on the way back. :)
It wasn't too bad of a drive, we were greeted warmly and handed a bag of feed to feed the goats. They were greedy buggers!Then it was on to my favorite thing: Do you know what it is???

Chickens! Here Roo is holding a chick. If I could, I would have chickens. Fresh eggs. I had to remind Roo not to hold it too tight, it was just a chick.

Can you tell Rob has the camera? Does he NOT see my butt is in this frame?

Here's Butter, she was gentle and calm.

This was Butter's favorite part. The pygmy goats. She loved holding them.

I think she would have brought one home if they had let her. SO cute and their little Bahhhhhhs.

I was nervous for Roo to pick one up and hold it, he is not so gentle. I was telling him NOT to pick up that particular goat because it had a dirty back side and I was pretty sure it wasn't finished. Oh course he went straight for it and the goat peed on him. He had done SO well all day keeping his pants dry and then the goat peed on him! All he could say was "Bad goat! Somebody needs to give that goat diapers!"
Ever hear of the Funky Chicken? Well, I found it! Turns out it's not a chicken...

It is a pheasant. A Chinese pheasant. He was laying down in his pen and I started whistling at him. He got up and start fluffing up and strutting.

The colors on this bird were just GORGEOUS. See how fluffy he is, that's cause he liked my whistling. He was coming over to check me out. Sorry Birdy, I'm spoken for by my own Chicken legs!

Hayride. For some ODD reason we were all wearing purple that day. Even Rob had his Vikings hat on. (note to self: You need a haircut!)

Again Rob with the camera...We are picking gourds. Did you know EVERY gourd has ten stripes? And there is a gourd called the crown? It looks like a gourd wearing a crown. I'm gonna find one of them next time.

Roo on the tractor.

The reason I want Chickens! The kids got to pick a dozen eggs, and I bought them to bring home.

We had SUCH a great time. We plan to go back in October for pumpkins, Haralsons and POPCORN. They grow it right there in the fields!

As for our (limit) two bags of SweeTango's well they are almost gone. They are juicy and SWEET and a bit tart, but no where near as tart as a Haralson. They are very crunchy, firm. Normally I can't eat a whole apple, I get sick of the taste. Honeycrisps are way too much to eat for me. But I could eat about 3 SweeTangos a day. They are SO good. I hope you all get a chance to try them.