Agritainment and wedding anniversaries

Yesterday was our 29th wedding anniversary.  We pretty much decided to stick it out for another year.  And we sort of took the day off.  It was a rotation day for me; I work every other Saturday, so on those weeks I get Thursday off.  Farmer Bill will often go to help for the first half of the Thursday market, but didn't this week.  I spent the morning catching up on some bookkeeping.  The chimney sweep came about 9:30 and swept the chimney, so we're ready to go for this winter.  Farmer Bill organized a load for the Thursday market & sent Ryan off by himself -- the traffic is slowing down at markets so 1 person can handle it pretty well.  Then Farmer Bill & I went out for lunch (!) and drove to Spring Valley, WI to visit an orchard and talk to the owner about using his equipment to press apple cider.  It is a long drive, but a pretty one in the fall.  We talked about farming, about being married for 29 years & all the things we've experienced together.

The kitchen this orchardist built was compact and tidy.  They bake some pies on Fridays and Saturdays.  On Sundays they make apple crisp.  New this year they started making doughnuts, which have proved very popular.  They bottle honey from their own hives, make some jams and jellies out of their own fruit (pears, plums, apples, and grapes), and sell maple syrup tapped from their own trees.  The orchard includes about 30 acres of trees and is set up for people to come in and pick their own.  I could see the wheels turning in Bill's mind (& that usually makes me nervous).  We've toyed for a couple of years about having a store on SRF to sell our apples.  But we really don't want to go the agritainment route.  No jumping pillows, no corn mazes, no petting zoo.  And our orchard is definitely not set up for pick-your-own.  The rows are too close together; each row is a different variety that ripens at a different time.  Keeping pickers -- especially young ones -- on the right rows would be impossible.  And making SRF a destination is difficult when there's nothing to do but buy a bag of apples or a jar of jam.  It's hard to see why people would come to our place when they can go a dozen other places & be entertained.

This winter we'll have more conversations about what to do & how to do it.  Stay tuned.