Rees Fruit Farm Field Trip

Today was the CPLS kindergarten field trip to Rees Fruit Farm. The farm is located right on Hwy 24 and is hard to miss. We left the school at 930a and I had my daughter and her friend Haven in the car. Let me tell you, I never knew two girls could talk so much, so loudly about anything that literally popped into their heads! Basically we did three things; pick pumpkins from the patch, take a hayride through the orchard, and tour their processing plant.

Not much to tell we already had a large pumpkin that we got from the patch in Lawrence when my sister was visiting, so Natalie decided she wanted a little pumpkin. She had fun with her friends running up and down the field looking for pumpkins. Then we went on the hayride which was entertaining. I didn’t take a picture of this but they harvest a kind of apple called, Arkansas Black. They look just like plums!

After being outside we went inside their plant, the kids got to see where all the apples were delivered. We then learned that the apples were cleaned with only water and bristle brushes by a very large machine. From there the apples went into a sorting machine that sorted each apple by size. The kids enjoyed how fast the apples moved. Finally we saw the final destination for many apples, a large hydraulic press, that turned apples into juice.

After the fun and excitement they gave each of the children a cup full of apple slushy which considering the temperature maybe hot cider would have been a better choice.