Farm to Table

This morning we went off to a farm just across the Pennsylvania border that lets people pick apples from their orchard.  Every variety (except honeycrisp) is $0.70/lb, which is great for our area of the country, where $0.99 for is the cheapest that the cheaper varities sell for on a good day.  We loaded up mostly on Jonagold and Staman apples.  The Jonagold variety was extremely juicy, though not as full of flavor as we were hoping--but still not bad, only average.  I had never tried a Staman apple before, but I really like them!  A little more tart, a little less juicy, but still sweet.  Almost like candy.

 So this is actually a pretty interesting lesson in setting the white balance on your camera.  The picture above is the first picture I took.  It looked a lot more blue than what I was seeing in real life.  I checked the white balance on my camera, and yep, it was set to "tungsten light".  I changed it to "cloudy" and got the picture below.  Same apples, same lighting conditions, taken only seconds apart.

 This picture below of Clark has another fun story.  He was trying to pull the apple off the branch.  When I decided to push down on the button to take the picture I thought I would get a picture of him pulling the apple.  But just as I snapped the picture the apple came free and he went wheeling backward.  A split second later he was out of the picture frame, sitting flat on his bottom.  I had the shutter speed set to shoot at 1/1000th of a second, which is fast enough to shoot movement.  You can actually see the movement in the photo if you look--the droplets of water are suspended in air.

 These guys had some MUDDY shoes after everything was said and done.  In fact, lots of that mud on their shoes transferred to our pants and shirts from lifting them up.

 All of the above apples were Jonagold, and we got some really massive apples.  The apples below are all Staman.

Summer Days

Here are a few things from summer.  I would write more about the summer, but I'm going to go watch a CES fireside now.

 I'm not sure what this is, but Madison was pretty please with it.

We went to the Getty nmuseum in Malibu.  They had some awesome flowers.

For my b-day we went camping.  All of my sisters were present.  Clarice was kind enough to let me borrow a flannel shirt.

I also requested a pinata.  The best part is just watching people try and hit it.  

I'm not sure why I'm sleeping here.

Grammy and G'pa Ames came to visit.  They were so lucky to be here and help Tyler move 300 board feet of walnut ($125).  At that price it's cheaper for me to use walnut for crafts and paint it than buy pine at Home Depot.  

A horse polo match.  That was a first for us.  It was fun, but I'm not sure how often we would do it in the future.  A lot of ritzy people come apparently.