We went to a neighbor’s farm to get some wood sliced for Jeff’s creations. We brought him the surplus of eggs we had on hand, which he always appreciates and then he shared some apples with us. He pointed to a garden shed filled with boxes of them and invited us to fill up our basket. The apples are a variety called Gold Rush. He’s been raving about that variety for years and shares some with us every fall. They are the best keeper he’s ever found (and that we’ve ever found) and when we bit into some we couldn’t believe how crisp they still were, in January! (And with no refrigeration.) We bought a few apple trees from him that he had grafted in that variety, to plant here. We have limited space and limited sunlight and weren’t even sure where we were going to plant them, but we knew we wanted to plant some Gold Rush apples here. Crisp apples in January and beyond? Yes, please! I’m not a fan of buying apples this time of year that are shipped across the world to make their way to our grocery store, but I sure do get cravings for fresh apples, especially in the winter. If we could grow more of our own here to enjoy in the colder months, how wonderful that would be!

Oh, and we came home with some parsnips for our soup too. Bracken balanced the largest one on his shoulder for the picture. We weren’t sure if it would still be edible, but apparently it was very fun to balance.

P.S. I made a blooper a few weeks ago with a plugin for comments here on the blog. It was quiet here and I wondered where you had all gone and then today I realized why. Jeff tried to leave a comment and it wouldn’t let him. Whoops. Sorry about that. Well, I fixed it and you are now welcome to leave comments again, I do so love to hear from you!