Autumn's arrival on Sunday was met with a day at the somewhat local Erwins Orchard and Cider Mill in South Lyon - a place with fields of orchards and pick your own raspberries alongside their infamous apple cider and doughnuts.
Nothing beats the taste of hand picked sun warmed raspberries and it became a family tradition to fill up countless recycled margarine boxes, freezing them until there was a need for more home made jam, stewing them into a sauce with ice creams and the like. The PYO places in Yorkshire were quiet, small affairs, their popularity waning so I, wrongly in hindsight expected the same to be true here in Michigan. Oh how wrong was I! I should of known due to the popularity of how quickly canning and preserves books get re-homed that this wasn't going to be a quiet affair, instead there were queues for packing to the huge queue to even buy a bag for apple picking - but more on that another time.
Nothing beats the taste of hand picked sun warmed raspberries and it became a family tradition to fill up countless recycled margarine boxes, freezing them until there was a need for more home made jam, stewing them into a sauce with ice creams and the like. The PYO places in Yorkshire were quiet, small affairs, their popularity waning so I, wrongly in hindsight expected the same to be true here in Michigan. Oh how wrong was I! I should of known due to the popularity of how quickly canning and preserves books get re-homed that this wasn't going to be a quiet affair, instead there were queues for packing to the huge queue to even buy a bag for apple picking - but more on that another time.
Cider Mills here are far from only being about the cider, they are full of family entertainment and yummy, tempting foods. Here there were petting zoo's, 3D movies to kids rides, corn mazes and sunflower gardens - my favorite - but I loved the rows on rows of raspberries and sounds of bees humming around. While it's a little late in the season for the raps there was certainly enough to find and fill our punnets full, now the mission begins to work out just what to do with them all!
Have you been raspberry picking this year? Ever visited a cider mill? I'd love to hear about it!
Have you been raspberry picking this year? Ever visited a cider mill? I'd love to hear about it!