by Katherine

          We had stopped at Hollin Farms last fall, and we fell in love with the beautiful views and peace and quiet of the farm. We picked pumpkins last year, but at $1/ lb, it makes it hard to justify getting pumpkins. But since we enjoyed it so much last year, I decided that we should go and just buy a super small pumpkin. After all, we had gotten our big, carving pumpkin in Ohio for super cheap.

          The farm also has other pick-your-own items throughout the growing season, like apples, lettuce and other salad greens, gourds, and berries. I had read about some of these opportunities, but we hadn't inquired about any other items last year. But this year when we got to the farm, we decided to forget the pumpkins and try something new. So we dug for peanuts and potatoes!

by Bradley

          When it's fall time you have to go to a corn maze! I went to my first corn maze last year in The Plains with Katherine and thought it would be a piece of cake. The one last year was 5 acres and turned out to be much more disorienting than I thought and the one we did this year was 24 acres!

          We ended up doing only about half of the maze because it was unclear when we entered that the entrance and exit were the same place. It was still a ton of fun and still very challenging. We logic-ed our way out with our engineering brains and a little help from clues posted within the maze.

by Katherine

         Dussel Farms is the farm of my childhood. We got our pumpkins, gourds, fancy corn, and other such things here. It had probably been like 15 years since I had gone last, so on our visit back to my hometown, I had to take Brad here. I figured we could grab a pumpkin for old time's sake and then head out. I thought that even though we were in Ohio, the land of the cheap, a small farm would still have higher prices. But I was wrong! I wanted to buy all of the pumpkins! You could get giant ones for sooo cheap! We ended up getting a 21 lb pumpkin for only $4! That's at least 3 times cheaper than anywhere in Virginia! We grabbed some acorn squash, butternut squash, and a pie pumpkin for cooking. They were all a flat $1.25, not bad, so we picked the largest ones to get more bang for our buck. We also got a couple of gourds for decoration. Oh Ohio, how amazing and cheap you are in the fall!!

by Bradley

          We made our own apple cider and it is honestly the best I've ever had! Katherine's friend Neb has a fruit press and we used it on the insane amount of apples we picked.

          We used a bushel of apples and got about 2.5 gallons. Cider is really easy to make if you have the press because unlike apple juice, which only uses the flesh of the apple, cider uses everything including core, stems etc. so you just throw it all in

          First step is to grind up the apples into small pieces and collect them in a fine mesh bag. Then you put the bag under the press and turn it so it squeezes every last drop of liquid out of the apples.

by Bradley

          Katherine had to go apple picking when we took a fall trip to Ohio, her home state. Stotler's Orchard was definitely a different experience than the apple picking we did last year. Virginia has great big, tall apple trees whereas in Ohio the tress were only about 1.5 times my height.

          I kinda missed using the long tools for collecting apples in Virginia, but here was fun too because you could reach it all with your hands. There were so many varieties to choose from we decided to get a little of everything...we left with 2.5 bushels.

by Katherine

          If you've never heard of cinnamon chips, you've been missing out!! They are just like chocolate chips except that they're all cinnamon!! They're great in any baked good and perfect for fall and pairing with apple desserts! These muffins are pretty healthy; I always cut down on butter and add an equal amount of apple sauce. I also cut down on sugar; there's no need for any dessert to be overly sweet. So what you're left with is flavor bursting cinnamon chips and apples!