Oak Glen
As always, our trip to Oak Glen was short but fun. Oak Glen is a city full of apple orchards in California, U.S.A. They have all sorts of fun things to do including picking your own apples. It still is cheaper to buy apples in a major grocery store but we wanted to have fun picking them ourselves. I had fun but Elena grew tired after awhile. When we picked apples, we got stickers in our shoes and socks. Since it was a clear day, the sun baked us, too! I guess fun is one of those words that is difined by the individual. The activities can be educational at times. One time, Elena had taken her class there to show the kids around. Some of the people there live without television, radio, or electric appliances.
The one thing that I look forward to when I go there is to make my own apple cider. Rileys Farm has a cider press. it looks like it was designed in the 1800s but it works great. First you put the apples in what looks like a meat grinder for the home. It crushes the apples which fall into a burlap lined wood bucket. After that, I put the bucket in a giant C-clamp. I screw it down so that it pushes on all of the crushed apples. The burlap lining acts as a filter and the juice flows down a little ramp into another bucket. After all of that, we poured it into a one gallon, 3.79 liters, jug. It took about 50 pounds, 22.68 kg, of apples to make the cider. By the way, they charged $10.00USD for us to make it.
The place is full of arts and crafts, country shops, and good places to eat. Of course, everything there is centered around the apple. Though they do have raspberries that one can pick themselves. The sweets that they have are incredible. I have never tasted a candy apple like the one that Elena bought. It tasted like those cinnamon fire sticks wrapped around an apple. Of course, their apple pies, jam, jellies, sauces, syrups, and hundreds of other things are all homemade. Most places will even ship things to you! The shops are great and there is one shop that has two trees growing straight throught it! One shop was a house that was made in the late 1800s and is full of antiques.
We always like going there. We even like to visit their petting zoo. If you are ever in Southern California, U.S.A., then this is a must see attraction. The elevation is about 4500 ft., 1,371.6 meters, so it can be hot or cold depending on the time of year so dress accordingly. If you don't live here, follow the link to the different farms and order something. No matter what you decided to do, always remember to look at our photo gallery.