Fall

It didn’t feel too much like Fall today, with a powerful Nor’Easter providing a nice blanket of snow to most of MDI, but yesterday was classic FALL and it was great to enjoy it at Beech Hill’s end-of-the-season event.

There were apples and apple bobbing. Apparently, the classic bobbing in a big steel bucket has fallen out of favor because of hygiene issues and cold. I did start to fall back toward the “well, back in the DAY, we stuck our heads in buckets of water and we LIKED it,” but I have to admit that the apple on the tree method was fun.

There was apple tossing, that is, tossing apples to land in hula-hoops which degenerated into smashing apples against trees. I could feel Todd L-S cringing with every “splat” — sorry Todd.

There was crushing apples in a press. It’s amazing how kids take to that. I like it too. I remember Scott Grierson bringing his apple press to the College in 88-89 and we spent the entire day crushing a pickup truck full of apples. Awesome.

And of course there was face and hand painting. Maggie was pulled into the fold and Kayla did a good looking Harry Potter on me. I think I was the only “adult” with face paint. It’s always funny once one forgets that one has face paint and begins a conversation with a new friend … curious stares.

And finally, there’s the pigs. The Beech Hill team has put our four porcine friends in a new field. They’re looking pretty good to me — still like to eat my feet and definitely love freshly crushed and squeeze apple meat. And the whole event comes full cycle … apples, smashing apples, face painting, pigs, pigs eating smashed apples…