Apple Picking

Join us on Sunday for a trip to Altapass Orchard.

Celebrate the Fall Harvest at Historic Orchard at Altapass! The peacemaking committee is sponsoring an annual trip to the Altapass Orchard on the Blue Ridge Parkway on Sunday, October 11. We will leave from church as a group at 12:30, and will eat lunch at the Orchard. It takes slightly over an hour to reach the Orchard from church, so you might want to pack a light snack to tide you over. There are several happenings going on that day, including a book signing, “Spruce Pine” by local authors David Biddix and Chris Hollifield, bluegrass music, and hayrides through the orchard. The Orchard is free, but lunch is not, and there is a $5.00 charge for the hayride. You can visit their website for more information. If you are interested in attending, please email Mike Elder at melder at embarqmail dot com, or call him at 329-0303. We are trying to get a ballpark head count so we can organize the lunch and hayride. This should be a beautiful trip near the peak of leaf changing season, so we urge you to make plans to attend.

To get you in the mood...

After Apple-Picking by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.