Apple Butter Festival in September for "Picture Day"

Well, today is a teeny bit cooler than the last few days have been.  Yesterday was a scorcher!!  When I went to Yoga class around 5 p.m. my van temperature thingy said is was 108 degrees (f)!  Yikes!!  Supposedly we had a "cold" front come in last night or early this morning so the high temp should be 99 or 100 today and then in the upper 90s for the next few days.  So I'm sharing a Fall post! LOL  Actually I'm sharing because since it is already the 11th of August and if someone reading this wants to go to the Apple Butter Festival they'll have time to plan as it is held on the second weekend of September.  Well, at least it was in 2011.  I would suggest for one to check first before driving all that way.

So, in September of 2011, hubby and I drove up to Idalou, Texas (near Lubbock) to attend the Annual Apple Butter Festival.  I posted about it and shared these photos on a different blog back in 2011.

Here's a re-cap of my original blog post about the trip:

The Apple Butter Festival is not that big.  The orchard claims to have 6,000 apple trees and I’m pretty sure they are correct.  I did not do a count but there were a lot of trees.  Not as big and as tall as I had envisioned in my mind (they cut the tops off for easier picking) but many were laden with lots of small apples. (I’m sure that this year’s lack of rain caused the apples to not grow as they should and for some trees, apples were lying all over the ground.)  A lot of locals were there for the event pulling their buckets to pick their own apples as well as a few out of town visitors including me and Eddie.

I never would have thought that there would be an apple orchard in Texas.  The red apples on the trees were very lovely and the rows were marked by signs such as “Jonathan,” “Gala” and “Red Delicious.”   The resident dog of the orchard was also at the festival.  He just calmly laid by the main building and watched the comings and goings.  We didn’t pick any apples to bring home as they were really small, but Eddie picked one up off the ground and pretended to eat it for the above photo. Ha, ha.

The main building of the orchard had a little gift shop and a bakery which has regular business hours.  Oh my! The goodies you could buy from the bakery!  We bought a German apple cake, apple turnovers and apple butter.  You could buy apple cider by the gallon or a glass of  apple cider slush.  If you decide to pick your own apples to buy, the orchard has buckets on wheels for you to use.  Sadly, in the store they had these beautiful red apples for sale, but they were brought in from Oregon.  Guess the Texas crop just wasn’t that good this year, or maybe the Texas orchard is a “pick your own” type of venue.  I was surprised to find one tree that had apple blossoms in September.  Surely it was a confused tree.

Even though the festival was small, it was still a fun thing to go to.  And  if you’re ever up by Idalou, Texas on the second weekend of September, stop by.

I'm wondering that if they got a lot of rain in the spring like we did here, will their apples be bigger this year?  I do hope they still have the festival.  We won't be able to go this year as our September weekend schedule is already full!  That's my photo share for today's "Picture Day."
Hope you're having a great week!

Happy Crafting and Picture Taking!