Kind of a crappy picture but . . . hubby and I 'went bumming' today (as my mom would say). We decided to go visit two popular local spots and have a bit of fall fun. The first stop was an apple orchard/pumpkin place called The Little Farmer.
I love this place. Everything is so rustic looking, so old fashioned, so 'take a break from everything and breathe.' They have tons of pumpkins of every size. They have tons of apples of nearly every variety. Usually you can go out into the orchards and pick apples yourself but due to our crazy hot and dry summer, there was a sign posted saying they'd had a 90% crop loss and 'pick your own' was not available this year. That was fine with us because we always just buy the ones that are already bagged up anyway, but it was shocking how much damage the summer had done around here.
They have hayrides here, and a big play area for kids. There is a craft barn, where you go up a ramp to the former hay mow that has been cleaned out and turned into a craft fair type place. Downstairs in the barn is where the caramel apples are made and sold, and the line here is always long.
There is another building that is called The Apple House. I think it might have been another barn in old days. Inside you can buy more craft fair type things, but this one is mainly food items. There are jams, syrups, salsas, butters, preserves, sauces. There are soup mixes, cake mixes, cookies mixes, candies, recipe books, kitchen items. I found some candles and even some soaps in there. And this is where you can buy their homemade pies and muffins, fresh and frozen. Yep, this building is verrrrrrry popular.
They also have animals there, like this Highland something-or-other cattle. (There was another one laying behind the trough to the right.)
There are peacocks that stroll about the grounds.
There are a bunch of goats and sheep that kids love to feed.
One of the funniest things is a series of ramps set up along one barn, that lead up to a second story platform where a pulley contraption is. The lower end of this pulley is down at the fence and kids love to put a food pellet in the cup, crank the handle so the belt carries the cup up and dumps it in a tray. Quite often there is an adventurous goat that will journey up the ramps to claim that treat reward. There was one up there today. Silly goat!
I love this picture! In the background is the historic family house. I don't remember the details offhand, but this place is gorgeous. We noticed that it was open to the public this year. Apparently they had coffee and a gift shop inside, but we didn't go in because we already had our hands full from the Apple House shop.
The Little Farmer is obviously located out in the country. It is in the hilly, gorgeous area along the east side of Lake Winnebago (Wisconsin). I took this pic from the parking lot, just to show the fall colors we're already getting here. This view is actually less colorful that most places in the area. And if the picture went a hair more to the left you'd be able to actually see the lake not too far back.
There was one damper to this visit . . . the fact that we almost freakin' died while leaving. Seriously! It's a busy highway and right as we were pulling out, heading to the right, a line of cars was approaching in the other lane and some dickhead, flying about 60mph, decides to pull out and pass, which brought him into our lane! Hubby had to floor it and jerk the truck back over to the shoulder and the guy that was being passed had to swerve to his shoulder, and the dumbfuck was swerving everywhere, unsure what to do. GEEZ!!!!
We then headed over to another of our favorite local places . . . Kelley Country Creamery. This is a family owned ice cream shop and dairy farm that we discovered three years ago, and now love to make a traditional fall visit.
Some cute fall decorations at our rustic wooden table.
Hubby had a Slow Moving Vehicle sundae (typical vanilla, fudge, nuts), and I had my usual Pumpkin Pecan w/caramel sundae. We just got small size this year because the regular ones are huge. We usually bring some ice cream home too but didn't this time because we'd just spent so much at the Little Farmer.
After our ice cream we just went cruising around on country roads, looking at the fall colored scenery. We had fun just wondering into areas we don't normally go to, and then eventually found our way back to familiar roads and headed home.
Our Little Farmer haul . . . bag of Macintosh apples, caramel sauce, rhubarb jam, blackberry syrup, maple syrup, Hungarian mushroom soup mix, creamy wild rice soup mix, two apple walnut muffins, and a small cranberry walnut pie. Mmmmmm! Although we did sniff a lot of candles, we decided we have enough here already and didn't buy any. And while I did dig through the whole display box of soaps to see what they all had, I scolded myself that since I'm going back to making my own I need to stop buying others. I don't even remember the name of the company and that's too bad because I would have at least liked to look them up online. Bummer.
So that was our fun little adventure for today. I do have older posts about both of these places, but don't have time at the moment to look back for the links. I think doing a search of the blog should get you to them. Also, you can see a ton more pics from today in the Facebook album located
HERE if you're interested.
Do you have a special local favorite? What do you love about it? I'd love to hear.
