It’s the most wonderful time of the yearrrrrr!  Fall is literally my favorite season of the year, and for good reason! Pumpkin Spice Chai Lattes, beautiful colored trees, cozy hoodies and sweaters, and the start of the holiday season. What more could you ask for? Well nothing says fall quite like a trip to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch!  Funny story, I’d never actually been to an apple orchard until I moved to Illinois and man, I was missing out! The apple orchard that I like to frequent is called County Line Orchard in Hobart, Indiana. They actually close this weekend so definitely go by and visit for their closing weekend if you can!

Pricing And Attractions:

When we went there was a three tier pricing system: – $3 gets you admission to the apple orchard, a u pick bag, and a tractor ride to the apples from the barn. – $5 gets you all of the above plus admission to their kids’ farm (basically a petting zoo) – $7 gets you admission, a u pick bag, tractor ride, and also admission to their maze. – $10 is their all access pass which gets you admission to all of their attractions including the moo choo train which is usually an additional $2.

Picking The Apples:

Once the tractor lets you off at the actual apple orchard, then the real fun begins!  Depending on the day you choose to go, different apples are available to pick. When we went there were mostly Golden Delicious due to a lack of apples this year.  Pro Tip: Try to go close to when the apple orchard first opens to have more options of apples to pick. I believe by the next weekend after we went they were all out of u-pick apples, and only had them available in bins to pick out of. We had to go closer to the back of the lanes, but luckily we were able to find some huge, gorgeous Golden Delicious apples! They were a little hard for my oldest to pull down from the trees, but when she used both hands and I steadied the branch for her she was able to get her own little collection of apples going. Also, be careful about how many apples you grab while you’re out there because they’re almost $2 a pound. With how big the apples are that can add up really quickly, and 9 times out of 10 you won’t get around to eating them all, especially if you’re anything like my crew lol.

The Great Pumpkin:

The really cool thing about this apple orchard is that they have a makeshift pumpkin patch available for you to pick out your favorite pumpkin to carve.  Kaia loves halloween right now, so that was definitely one of the first things she wanted to make a beeline for.  I currently have about a million pumpkins sitting around that I have no idea what to do with lol! Once again be careful with the size you get since you pay by the pound. And also, have to get it all the way back to the barn to pay for.

Kids’ Farm:

To be 100% honest, my daughter didn’t really give two snaps about this part. It kind of seems like an afterthought, and just thrown together. Also, to be fair, it was starting to get really windy and cold by the time we got there and we were all ready to just go. The one highlight though was seeing the newborn baby chicks they had hatched recently and finding out that almost everyone of their goats was pregnant with either twins or triplets. Bless those mama goats… As a whole, normally it would have been a much more fun experience since a lot of things were closed due to Covid. The food trucks, food hall, and the availability of apples was a huge let down, but overall we had a good time!  Hopefully next year we’ll be able to enjoy it a little bit more once this pandemic is hopefully passed.