Collecting Pumpkins and Apples in Autumn

The autumn season is a classic time for harvesting fruits and vegetables from farms; in fact, until about 500 years ago, the autumn season was known simply as “harvest,” and for good reason. Gourds, apples, pumpkins, and much more are collected at this time, and today, they can be a source of great fun for families. Autumn activities can involve families visiting farms where the kids can have fun picking apples from the trees (with supervision), and kids can also visit the pumpkin patch and choose and harvest the pumpkin that they want to take home (often for making a jack o lantern). Other autumn season activities on the farm for kids may include a hay bale ride or a puppet show, or anything else that the farm may offer. For the adults, meanwhile, all of this means that fresh, quality ingredients are being collected for all kinds of desserts, from baking pies to apple donuts to pumpkin pie and baked pie of other flavors, too, and this can be great for American Thanksgiving or a holiday meal. The autumn season is also a great time for a rustic countryside wedding, and increasingly, American brides and grooms are choosing such an aesthetic over the classic banquet hall look.

Apples and Pumpkins

These two crops are popular around the world as ingredients for all sorts of dishes and desserts. In fact, around the world, 7,500 varieties of apples can be found, and 2,500 of these varieties can be found in the United States alone. They may vary in size, color, and shape, and currently, the biggest apple on record was a Hokuto apple that a Mr. Chisato Iwasaki found in October 2005. This monster apple weighed just over four pounds, and while most other apples shouldn’t be expected to grow this big, such fruits are massively popular for baking and cooking. Apple fritters, apple pie, baked apples, and more are just the start, and many cookbooks are bound to include recipes that involve this popular, sweet fruit. A nine-inch pie needs about two pounds of apples, and given how widely apples are grown, getting all the apples needed for such pies may be no trouble at all. Apples may stand upright or be more rounded, and they are often red but may be green or even yellow, depending on the variety.

Pumpkins, too, are popular for baking, and pumpkin pie has become the very image of Thanksgiving dessert in the United States over the decades. Such vegetables have been grown in North America for over 5,000 years, and they may vary in size and shape, with the rounder, fuller ones being popular for carving into jack o lanterns for Halloween. They are planted between May and June, and by October, they will be ripe and big enough to be picked for eating or recreational use. Not only are they great for pumpkin pies, but their seeds can be salted and baked in the oven for a low-calorie snack, too.

Both apples and pumpkins are ideal for making pies, and this is good news for dessert lovers everywhere. In fact, Crisco and the American Pie Council launched a survey asking what dessert Americans would prefer a friend or family member bring to a holiday dinner, and pie was the most popular response, at 29%. And a similar survey was carried out to find the most popular pie flavors. The clear winner was apple at 47%, with pumpkin at second place with 37% and chocolate cream coming third at 32%.

The autumn season is a fine time not only to have fun harvesting pumpkins and apples from the farm, but also using a farm (with permission) as a site for a rustic wedding, which is an increasingly popular wedding idea among brides and grooms today. Such a wedding may be outdoors in the orchard or indoors in the farm house or in a cleaned-out barn, and this means that many decorations for the rustic setting are already in placed. For the reception, baskets of harvested crops like gourds, apples, and pumpkins make for charming and edible decorations and wedding favors for guests. Autumn is a fairly popular time for weddings, so farms should be booked early to make this wedding destination possible.