A is for Apple

I decided to try the A-Z Blogging Challenge again this year, but not with a stitching theme.  What I want to do - and I have no idea if I can find something for each letter - is try and take pictures or talk about something that's a little unique about living in rural Appalachia.  Southern West Virginia, but I'm not going to be any more specific than that!

I should have posted 'A' yesterday, but I had to work double shifts and then fell asleep as soon as I got home, so I'm already behind - this does not bode well for my efforts in this, haha!

Anyway - A!  Apple Orchard!





This is the only orchard within a four hour drive of where I live; unlike most destinations, this is luckily very close to home.  It's almost all apples - there are a few cherry trees but they are not visible from the road.  They're all in pre-spring dried out state right now, of course, but what I want to show you guys - what is different about this orchard is - on mountainsides, you have to terrace.



Neat little layers of trees!

That's an old gas well, capped off, in the foreground.  I hate those things.  Might talk about them for 'G', though.

I tried a panoramic shot even though I didn't have my tripod - didn't come out too badly, though!  See how sharply the road curves?  Most mountain roads around here follow the old wagon tracks - they curve along the easiest path.  It's no problem for cars to go down a steep hill and then back up, but it was a different story for your horse!  Sometimes, you have to drive miles to get to a place, when 'as the crow flies', it is much, much shorter.  For example - if you follow this road, about a mile further on you will suddenly be beside the apple orchard again - and can look right back across to this spot when you would think you had left it way behind.  The orchard isn't a mile long!  The road just bends and curves around the hillside.



It's pretty obvious, but just in case - the terracing is necessary, simply to keep the fallen fruit from rolling down to the bottom of the orchard and rotting in a big, stinky mess.  Trees will grow on hillsides, of course, but their trunks look really odd sometimes, and I'll have to get a picture of that sometime.  They grow out, and then up.  These trees are actually growing on the sides between the terracing if you look close - the fruit lands on the flat part. This terracing was done over fifty years ago - maybe longer.  I'll have to find someone who knows for sure; I don't know the owners personally.

You can pick your own apples in this orchard, by the way - different prices for picking off the trees or picking up off the ground.  Gorgeous fat red, yellow or green apples!  Yum!