With fall around the corner, my family and I headed to Shady Brook Farm, a Bucks County staple, and celebrated fall a little early with apple picking, wildflower picking and a stroll through the sunflower fields.

We started the day at Stone’s Throw Pub for some pizza and beer before taking a tractor wagon ride to the fields. The first stop was the wildflower and vegetable fields. We didn’t really explore the vegetable fields because we were too focused on the beautiful wildflowers. We weren’t sure if we were going to pick any at first, but after seeing them, we decided to pick some of the prettiest pink, yellow, red and orange wildflowers to make a bouquet. We also couldn’t help but take a little photo shoot in the flowers, too.

Afterwards, we boarded the tractor again to head to the apple trees, the real reason we went to Shady Brook that day. We set off in one direction looking at the various apple trees to try to decide which kind we wanted to pick. My personal favorite is honey crisp, and luckily there were multiple rows filled with honey crisp apples. We picked plenty of them and then moved on to some other apples we’ve never heard of before; we decided to be adventurous and try some new apples. Once we all filled our bags, we climbed aboard the tractor and headed to the last stop, the sunflowers!

As we were pulling up, I was shocked to see how tall the sunflowers actually are – some were even taller than me! We didn’t pick any sunflowers, but we still wanted to walk through the fields and check out some of the cool photo opportunities hidden in the field. After taking some pictures, we headed back to the pick-up location to take the ride back to the farm’s entrance.

Even though it technically wasn’t fall yet, we still had fun doing our fall activities. Can’t wait for more fall fun this season!

— Mary Melnick, social media & editorial coordinator