Today we ventured north for the first time since arriving in Spokane and headed to Green Bluff where the Green Bluff Growers, an association of small family farms and farmstands, have U-Pick (pick your own fruit) and annual festivals. Today was the first day of the annual Peach Festival. Though we are not fans of festivals of any sort, we thought fruit picking would be a great activity for our boys and visiting Southern California friend. Of the 48 Green Bluff Growers, we selected #5 Hidden Acres as they offered U-Pick Peaches and Blackberries
The four boys were skeptical that they would have any fun as the whole day sounded like a whole lot of work.
Then they made a friend, a pig wallowing in the mud.
The pig got out of his mud bath and gave himself a shake. All four boys miraculously missed being splattered with mud; however, a cute 8-year-old girl dressed in pink and pigtails got spotted with mud, head to toe.
We ventured off to the blackberry patch and the boys had a blast finding the darkest, biggest berries. Surprisingly, no shockingly, the one who enjoyed berry picking the most was my husband who was the first to fill his gallon size bucket. The hot topic of discussion while berry picking was deciding what dessert should we make with the berries and peaches.
In the berry patch, we met a couple with a two-year-old son who just happened to move from Los Angeles to Spokane a year ago and live 5 blocks from our house! We exchanged numbers and look forward to getting together soon.
After our berry buckets were full, we headed to the peach orchard.
We successfully picked 13 pounds of blackberries and 50 pounds of peaches. Peach cheesecake and peach ice cream with blackberry sauce was the requested dessert. Uh huh, sure. Let me get right on that.
We have heard so much about 9 Mile Falls and Riverside State Park that we decided to head west and check it out.
Riverside State Park is a 10,000 acre park along the Spokane River, leading to the dam that creates 9 Mile Falls. Our goal was to find a place to swim and cool off from our fruit picking efforts in the hot sun.
We parked the car and followed a trail about a mile to this awesome bridge and perfect spot to take a dip.
The boys played in the cold water while I took photos of the wildflowers.
We hiked back to the car and spotted this caterpillar next along the way. EEK!
We headed home and miracle of all miracles happened – our 7-year-old fell asleep in the car. A true sign of an awesome day.
We were all beat by the time we got home but guess what? We have 13 lbs of blackberries and 50 lbs of peaches to deal with, not to mention dinner and the requested desserts.
Tired momma could not pull it off. My husband picked up dinner while I made a fantastic peach blackberry lattice pie. Not on the requested dessert menu which I managed to put off until tomorrow due to lack of ingredients and time.
Five quarts of peaches were canned tonight too using one of the 4 boxes of peaches. The other three boxes were put in our cold storage in the basement until tomorrow morning when they too will be canned.
The pie, just so you know, was a delicious end to our action packed day.
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