Apple-picking is one of my favourite summer-into-fall family traditions. On a crisp autumn day, there is nothing better than blue skies, green grass and fresh red apples. And there is no better snack than a tartly sweet juicy apple – I’m drooling just thinking about it!
The apple-picking season is just getting underway here in Ottawa, and there is no shortage of great places to go — so no excuse not to get out and enjoy the fresh air before another endless winter is upon us. 😉
I found this great list of apple orchards in and around Ottawa – there are more than a dozen of them! Here’s a few of our favourites.
This is my hands-down favourite place for apple-picking. Kilmarnock is about an hour south of town, along the Rideau River just around the corner from Merrickville. It’s picture-postcard lovely, and after you’ve picked your bushels full, you can poke on over to Merrickville, the “jewel of the Rideau” for lunch and boutique shopping. I wrote this post after our first visit in 2005, and here’s another one from 2009. (Stay tuned for the 2011 version soon!)
While Cannamore Orchards, also a little less than an hour south of town, may not be *quite* as picturesque as Kilmarnock, it has a lot of other fun stuff to engage and entertain kids of all ages. There are wagon rides, mazes, play structures, and even a few animals to pet. I blogged our Cannamore adventure from 2007 here.
If you’d like something a little closer to home, how about the Apple Hill Fruit Farm on Jockvale, just off Prince of Wales beside Stonebridge/Barrhaven? The Welch family has been operating this small pick-your-own and pre-picked apple orchard for more than half a century!
What say ye, bloggy peeps? Any other hidden apple orchard treasures in the national capital region worth checking out?
I also like Mountain Orchard (http://www.mountainorchards.ca/english/) for apple picking. I think most of the time we go there for the mini apple cinnamon donuts instead of the actual apples though 🙂
Love Mountain Orchards. Yes, the donuts are great. But so is the apple picking. My kids loved that they could climb a LADDER to do their picking. (As if we’d ever let them on a ladder at home!). There are tractor rides to the field, a corn maze, and I think we mentioned the donuts, didn’t we?!!!!
Hard to believe, but it's getting to be apple-picking time. Take your kids this fall – http://j.mp/p558vB via @danigirl
Enjoy your apple picking excursion. Any chance of seeing some pictures of what you decide to make from all of them?
Here’s another vote for Mountain Orchards.
I may be biased but my brother- and sister-in-law Shelly and Phil own it. Tons of varieties of apples, the doughnuts that the above posters have mentioned (but let me add that they’re made hot and fresh while you wait), corn maze (one year made in the shape of my son’s name!), playground, straw jump and wagon ride. It’s so much fun and once it was even voted best orchard in town by the A Channel.
Not that I’m biased LOL!