Our planning for this part of Washington was about orchards and hopes of picking Honeycrisp Apples. Well, they won’t be ready until mid-September! But to our delight, we had a fantastic day at Barbie’s Berries and Bellewood Farms.
When we arrived at Barbie’s and met Barbie and her husband Randy, we knew from the start that this was going to be a fun experience. They tied picking buckets around our waists so both hands were free to pick and we headed out into the orchards. Barbie specializes in strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. Strawberry and raspberry picking concluded about a month ago, so we started with picking big, ripe blueberries and then headed over to the blackberry bushes for more fun. We filled our buckets with delicious berries and ate plenty while we were picking. This is a great experience for families and one from the Houston area joined us in the blackberry orchard. The blackberries were huge! We also purchased strawberries that had been grown at the farm but picked earlier. We headed home with our goodies and I made homemade blueberry muffins. Delicious!
Another great experience was Bellewood Farms to learn about their apple orchards. They have 25,000 apple trees in the orchard and pride themselves as the Honeycrisp capital. Since they aren’t ready to pick yet, we sampled the delicious apple pie and blackberry pie, with ice cream, of course, in the cafe. There is a small gift store, and as the apples come in they will sell apples inside.
Bellewood has a distillery where they pride themselves as Washington’s first farm-to-glass distillery. Preston is the host for the tasting room and a real delight! He explained the use of apples in the making of vodka, gin, and brandy and was very generous in his sampling. He was entertaining as well as extremely knowledgeable, and told us about all the awards they have won with their brews. The explanations of the various processes that they go through to produce the different unexpected flavors in the alcohol was fascinating. Varieties such as Pumpkin spice liqueur and Apple Brandy were just a few of the varied selections. He was so convincing in his sales pitch that he even got me to sample some of the vodka and brandy, and I’m not a drinker.
Later in the evening, we returned to Bellewood Farms for their Friday evening live music. Tonight’s entertainment was Weatherside Whiskey Band. There is a large outdoor patio overlooking the apple orchards complete with fire pits and picnic tables where you can sit, enjoy a beer, and listen to the music, and dance if you care to. The band was fantastic and played mostly country music with a little bluegrass, and one Beatles song done with a country flair, thrown in just for fun.
Once again, our day was unexpected and turned out to be much more than we could have imagined.
