Fall-tastic birthday celebration

Birthdays are...well, maybe not quite as exciting as they used to be.  However, I suppose this last one was landmark in its own way because I've now found myself at that mystical age that people seem to call on for a while..."oh, you're 29 again?" - hardy har har.  Landmark or not, for this one, nothing epic - I did a mini-celebration in Dallas and then spent the rest of birthday weekend here in DC hanging out with the boy.  My request for birthday adventures?  We made a journey through the countryside (full of beautiful fall leaves...

...and ridiculously expansive, likely expensive, country estates...these were not mere homes, no...estates is really the only way to sum it up) to Homestead Farm in Poolesville, Maryland. 

Why??  Erin, you grew up out in the boonies!  What's so fascinating about a farm?  Well, the acres of land present in my youth never afforded the opportunity to pick apples!  I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated with the idea of picking my own fruit. Maybe it's just something I'm destined to like.  I was a little sad that we were at the bitter end of apple-picking season...

...but there were still enough clinging to the trees to make it worth our while.  The farm was also all cutesy in its fall/Halloween-ish festivities with a pumpkin patch and scarecrows and cheesy wooden cutouts to ensure that I got a costumed look in for Halloween.

After searching out the apples and making the rounds, we headed out with a bag of apples, sack of peppers, acorn squash, and some tasty canned goods - pumpkin butter, apple butter, blueberry jam.  Yum!  I love food.

In the interest of education, I present to you some apple facts:

• Apples are a member of the rose family.
• Apples ripen six to ten times faster at room temperature than if they were refrigerated.
• Fresh apples float because 25% of their volume is air.
• The crabapple is the only apple native to North America.

Fascinating, I know!  So I came home with these...

...which I'm resisting eating as plain apples, because that's just dull, and am instead turning into a lot of baked goods and random dinner items.

And don't worry, there was more to my birthday than just apples.  All of this was preceded by an amazing dinner on Saturday night at 2941 and generous gifts and then homemade chile rellenos (remember that sack of peppers?) after the apple adventures on Sunday.  That pretty much does it for me.