Last week the kids were off from school for fall break and before all "the boys" headed up north for deer hunting at Grandma's farm, we decided to spend an afternoon doing one of our favorite fall outings, picking apples. Usually we have headed to Emmett in the past for our apple picking, but this year we drove just a little farther, but in a different direction, and went to Payette. What precipitated this change was that I needed to find some Concord grapes to mix with our table grapes for making grape juice. My usual supply of Concord grapes was unavailable this year and I did not want to pay $1.50 per pound that the nearby fruitstand was asking, as I needed bushels of grapes. I happened to stumble across the information for Shurtleff vineyards on the internet and discovered that they had U-pick concord grapes for $5 a bushel! They happened to be within a mile of Kelley Orchards which offers U-pick apples. So we loaded up our buckets and boxes and headed to Payette for the afternoon. I called the vineyard first to make sure that there were still grapes available. I did not want to drive all that way and then find out that everything was picked. I spoke to a very friendly lady who gave me excellent directions and assured me that there were still plenty of grapes to be picked. She took my information as well so that we could be added to an e-mail list for future years.
The boys had a blast picking grapes and playing in the vineyard. Here is boy #1 being goofy (as usual!)
Boy #2 hiding in amongst the leaves. 
They actually were quite helpful with picking the grapes. And they were so excited about the big clusters.
Here they are in the handy-dandy wagons that the vineyard provided to transport your grapes to your vehicle. They also loved just hiding under the vines and pretending to be things. Sometimes they were pokemon....
Here they are pretending to be the Dionysus. (A little bit of Greek mythology rubbing off on them.)
And having Dad with us made it more fun. Plus he has the muscles and is very handy in situations where heavy loads of fruit need to be transported!
The day was beautiful and the weather was perfect - sunny and in the mid-60's.
It only took us about 20 minutes to pick 2 bushels of grapes (4 5-gallon buckets) - and that included the boys playing a lot and me stopping a lot to take pictures. Then we headed down the road about a quarter of a mile to drop our payment in a drop box at the owner's house. They also will let you just mail them a check, but the house is so close it is really quite easy to just drop off a payment. They use the honor system, which is refreshing to see in these days.
Kelley Orchards
was just down the road, less than a mile.
was just down the road, less than a mile.
This week they had Golden Delicious and Jonathon apples available for picking.
The boys once again were eager to fill their boxes.
They competed to see who could find the biggest apple (many of them were huge!)
They pretended to be various pokemon characters who pick apples with their tales, or who climb trees, and all sorts of strange pokemon things....
Delicious!
Most of the apples could be reached from the ground or with a short stepladder...
...or with a boost from dad!
In the end, I finally had to stop them from picking more because I had enough and I did not want to pay for a whole orchard's worth of apples. But they were having such fun that I think they could have picked the whole orchard! We ended up with "only" 112 pounds of apples!
We cut one up for the drive home and, man, was that apple way better than the store-bought one we had eaten for lunch just a few hours earlier.
All-in-all a rather fruitful day.
