There are some things that feel so thoroughly associated with autumn that we hardly think of them as special anymore.
Pumpkin patches. Hayrides. Apple picking. The crispness in the air. Rows of trees heavy with fruit. We see these things every year, or at least we expect to.
After an unusually warm growing season followed by a late frost in the spring, much of the apple harvest in our region was lost. Something I had always thought of as an almost ubiquitous autumn activity suddenly became a rather rare treat. There were fewer apples to pick, and suddenly the ones hanging from the trees felt a little more precious.
This year, however, apple picking was a rather different affair.
In fact, there was not a single apple orchard in the whole county offering apple picking. In order to find one, we had to look further afield, across the river to Flinchbaugh’s Orchard and Farm Market, to make the most of what remained. I had checked their Facebook page and discovered that this past weekend was possibly the only weekend they would be offering apple picking. A rare treat indeed.
So, on a Saturday morning, my sister and I set out on a small journey to the farm. It’s a quaint market full of fresh local produce on the inside and a sprawling flower market outside. At this time of year, it was overflowing with pumpkins. Food trucks were parked outside, and the smell of fresh apple cider donuts wafted through the air.
After purchasing our tickets and bag for apples, we climbed aboard a wagon for a tour of the farm, riding past fields of sunflowers, wildflowers, pumpkins and, eventually, the apple orchards. The orderly rows of trees stretched out before us, their branches holding clusters of apples together in little golden bunches.
As we rode towards the orchard, we passed the machinery being used to gather the commercial harvest. Two men working nearby paused to politely tip their hats as we passed. There was something wonderfully old-fashioned about the gesture, even as enormous modern equipment rumbled through the rows. Bees hummed lazily between the trees, gathering their own harvest as we gathered ours.
These were Golden Delicious, but they were unlike the Golden Delicious I usually pick up at the supermarket. These apples were honey-sweet and bursting with flavour. Crisp, fresh and still warm with the lingering memory of the sun, they tasted like the season itself.
Perhaps knowing how easily the harvest could have been lost made them taste even better.
And then there was the cat.
Oh, the cat.
An orange cat had apparently appointed himself official ambassador of the apple orchard. He was wonderfully friendly, purring loudly as he made his rounds among the visitors. Clearly accustomed to attention, he seemed determined to ensure that no one left the orchard without first receiving an appropriate amount of feline hospitality.
Naturally, we obliged.
After gathering our apples, we wandered into the pumpkin patch.
If the apple orchard was orderly, the pumpkin patch was anything but. The neat rows of trees gave way to a glorious mess of pumpkins, flowers and grasses. Round orange pumpkins appeared wherever you looked, tucked among the vegetation as though they had simply sprung from the earth wherever they pleased. Grasshoppers chirped and sprang out of our way as we tromped through the patch in search of the perfect pumpkin.
It felt less like walking through a cultivated field and more like wandering into autumn itself.
Perhaps that is what I enjoyed most about the day. None of it was particularly extraordinary. We picked apples. We hunted for pumpkins. We rode on a wagon. We took pictures among the wildflowers. We breathed in the crisp autumn air.
And yet this year, the ordinary didn’t feel quite so ordinary.
The apples reminded me that abundance is not guaranteed. A warm winter, a badly timed frost, too much rain or too little can change what a farm is able to produce. Something that seems inevitable when you see it stacked by the dozens in a supermarket can become surprisingly precious when you watch an entire harvest disappear.
Maybe that is one of the pleasures of paying attention. We think we know what a season will bring because we have experienced it before. But every year is slightly different. Some things flourish. Some disappear. Some return unexpectedly. And sometimes the thing you assumed would always be there becomes the thing you are most grateful to have.
This year, I got to pick my own apples.
They were delicious.
There was a pumpkin patch full of flowers and grasshoppers, a wagon ride through the farm, wildflowers waiting to be photographed, bees humming through the orchard and a very affectionate orange cat making his rounds.
It was an ordinary autumn afternoon.
But this year, it was extraordinary.
