Apple Picking at Noggins Corner Farm

Another weekend, another trip to The Valley. I know I've mentioned this a million times already, but I love, love, love the Wolfville area!! I always look forward to making the drive out. It was great to visit during the summer but it's even better in the fall. The leaves are starting to turn and making things look super pretty.

 

The purpose of our trip today was to do some apple-picking at Noggins Corner Farm in Greenwich between Wolfville and New Minas.

Info about Noggins (from their website):

"Owned and operated by Avard Bishop and his sons Andrew and Stirling, our mixed farm operation includes a variety of homegrown fruits and vegetables, a dairy and a bustling year-round farm market.

 

With 175 acres of orchards stretched along the banks of the Cornwallis River, we grow 52 varieties of apples, as well as pears, peaches, plums and raspberries. We also cultivate 80 acres of crops including sweet corn, squash, pumpkins, cucmbers, peas, and peppers.

 

Our state of the art warehouse allows us to store up to 2000 bins of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables. We also have the capacity to house another 1500 bins in cold storage."

What a great day it was. It was a picture-perfect apple-picking day; blue skies, sunny, warm, lots of smiles. There was so much to do too - there was a haunted house, a corn maze, tractor ride to the apple orchard, tire hills, slides, hay bales to climb on, etc.. There was so much that we didn't end up having the time to go through the 8 acre corn maze. Apparently it takes about an hour and a half to make it through. Crazy!

In addition to the apple u-pick they also had an herb u-pick available too.

The herbs looked great. I wanted to get some thyme but forgot about it and ended up leaving without any herbs (boo..)

The tractor ride to the orchard was nice. We drove by the corn maze, some trails, and finally to the apples. I love that they don't have boring rows of apple trees, but rather, sections of apple trees scattered around. We weren't able to find where the Honeycrisp apples were hiding but I think we passed them on the tractor ride sequestered on their own. Nova Scotia Honeycrisp apples are treated like gold around here.

There were a lot of varieties of apples to choose from. There was Cortland, Red Delicious, Empire, Russet, Golden Delicious, etc.. There was one, however, that I had never heard of before - Cox Orange. Apparently it's a really old variety of apple from England that is only grown in Oregon, the Vancouver area and Nova Scotia due to the similar weather pattern. They're pretty good.

It's a good thing they don't weigh customers on their way out. I 'may' have taste-tested a few apples before picking (shhhhh..). Gotta make sure they're the ones I want, right?

We picked a lot of apples and completely filled our large bag. I don't know how many pounds we ended up with but we'll be good for a while. I see an apple tart for tomorrow's thanksgiving dinner, some applesauce, apples in my oatmeal for breakfast, in my salad for lunch, or my favorite snack...sliced and dipped in almond butter or peanut butter.

Everyone in Nova Scotia should feel blessed that their apple harvest was good this year. In Ontario, many farmers lost their entire crop due to a really warm March and subsequent frosts in April. It's devastating. Many folks aren't able to go apple-picking with their families at all this year. So sad... Being that it is Thanksgiving this weekend I am going to be thankful for the apples that we were able to pick today.

Oh how cute...they also had a u-pick flower garden. Again, I would have loved to pick some but didn't get around to it. They would have looked really pretty in a vase on my kitchen table. (hmmm...I'm starting to see a pattern here. I seem to have a lot of good intentions but no actions).

After having fun in the playground and getting our apples we made a stop in the market to pick up a few things. We got a large pumpkin and two smaller pie pumpkins as well as a spaghetti squash.

I would have come home with more but my arms were full (and heavy). Look at these gourds!

And the brussel sprouts...nothing says fall like squash, pumpkins, brussel sprouts and root vegetables. It's almost too much to handle. I would have bought some of these too but I already have some in my fridge that I bought yesterday at the market. I was still tempted though.

Would you believe that after eating apples all afternoon I still came home and roasted some apples for dessert after dinner? Yup...I did!

Roasting apples is easy. I simply sliced up 4 apples, tossed them in 1 tsp of cinnamon and sprinkled them with 1 tbsp coconut sugar. I also added 1/4 chopped pecans into the mix.

Pop the pan into a 400F oven and roast for half an hour. Delish! It's like having apple pie without the crust. This would be great for breakfast mixed with some oatmeal or some yogurt.

Did you do any apple-picking this weekend? How about cranberry-picking? We're hoping to get out to the Lunenburg area tomorrow to pick some cranberries for our Thanksgiving dinner. We'll see what the weatherman says though. It's looking like rain. Hopefully it clears up!