Hopewell Furnace Historic Apple Orchard

Looking for somewhere interesting to go that is Very Fallish?

Check out Hopewell Furnace National History Site!   http://www.nps.gov/hofu/planyourvisit/hours.htm

We have been fortunate to visit the site for many years, taking our children along to pick more types of apples than you see just about anywhere else.  We're used to seeing Red and Yellow Delicious, and Hopewell Furnace does have those.  But they also have Macintosh and Winesap as well as a wide variety of apples that used to be popular in the old times, and that you don't see as much elsewhere nowadays.

Smokehouse apples are good for pies, and have a deep smoky afterflavor when you bite into them.  Cortland apples are the size of two of your fists put together and are also for making pies with - not too sweet, and they hold their shape when you cook them.  Northern Spy and Pippin (George Washington's favorite apple) are there as well.

Because it's a National History Site, the apples are not perfect like the ones you'd see in the supermarket.  They receive a limited amount of spraying for bugs, and sometimes come out a little lopsided.  The main office hands out the long picking poles, and you and your family can follow the map and try out the different types to see what you would like best.  Not all apples taste alike!

Two things to keep in mind... there will be yellow jackets.  They like the apples too, but you can avoid them.  They'll let you alone if you don't poke at them.  And there are white tail deer that come for the falls (fallen apples) long about dark.  So you do need to watch your step.

Apples that you pick are weighed at the office, and you pay for them per pound.  It's a lot less than you would pay at the grocery store, and you have the joy having picked them yourself!  Take a trip down, and enjoy the Fall!

Wooly Bears

It's Fall.  The season where the weather gets comfortable and invites us all to go out and get busy out of doors before the heavy Winter Season begins.  Yesterday I saw a Wooly Bear caterpillar, while out walking with my spouse.  Wooly Bears normally look like this: 

 I am fond of this type of caterpillar, since I kept one for a pet when I was younger.  I had it in a jar with holes in the lid for air, a twig, and leaves.  It wove itself a chrysalis and changed over the course of the winter, and in the Spring it hatched out as this rather plain looking moth: 

What was interesting about the Wooly Bear that I saw yesterday is that it was one long brown creature, no black in sight.  I've seen them almost all black, and all manner of variations in between, but I don't remember seeing one of them all brown before.  Tradition tells us that Wooly Bears foretell the weather for the Winter.  Having one that is all a single color either tells us that the Winter will be severe, or very easy.  Problem is that you will hear either of those possibilities for both all brown and all black.  So... not a very good prognosticator.

If you do get the chance to see one of these caterpillars, please be gentle.  They won't bite you, or hurt you.  Let them go on their way, and enjoy the fact that you've gotten a chance to see something that very Pennsylvanian!