The Orchard

"Where we goin' mom?"

I asked as she helped me with my shoes.

"To Sietsma's orchard," she replied.

I grinned broadly. Mom stood and handed me my red hoodie. I put it on and zipped it up. Mom put jacket on and we went out to the car. Mom buckled me into my car seat then got in the front as dad came out of the house.

I watched as we drove passed houses, restaurants, and a college campus. Then the scenery changed. I saw fewer houses and more trees. And then I saw the apple trees! And there was the familiar sign, not that I could read it. For me it served its purpose as a land mark and its message was clear: you are here.

We turned onto the old cracked asphalt parking lot, and parked beside the old farm house. Behind the house stood a nondescript cinder block building, it's beige paint cracked and peeling. Not that I cared. I had yet to learn to judge a building by its façade, and I knew what those four walls contained.

"Stay close," mom said when we got out of the car. I watched a man drive a forklift through the parking lot. Once it passed we crossed the parking lot and open the front door. I took a big sniff and nose was filled with a light sweet scent. I can almost smell it now just thinking about it. There's just nothing like the smell of freshly picked apples.

Straight ahead, behind the counter we saw the apple sorting machine. The upper part had a conveyor made of a wire grid that carried the larger apples to the end for bagging into half bushel bags, and the smaller apples fell through and rolled down a shoot to a cart. When a cart was full it was replaced with an empty and the full one was taken over the cider press.

I watched the apples go by for a second or two then turned to the right where there were picnic tables in front of a display case against the front wall. The case contained the treat we had come for: doughnuts.

Every Saturday during apple harvest season Sietsma's made fresh doughnuts. Early risers can watch them make doughnuts. When we arrived the doughnuts were all made and placed in neat rows on orange plastic trays behind the glass doors of the doughnut case.

They had three kinds of cake doughnuts: plain, powdered sugar, and cinnamon and sugar. Sometimes I chose powered sugar but my favorite was cinnamon and sugar.

Mom handed me a doughnut and I sat on the bench of the closest picnic table, while she filled a plastic cup with a light brown liquid. She called it apple cider but I knew something that sweet and delicious was more than just the runoff of recently pressed apples. It must have had some magic in it. And these doughnuts! Surely the manna in the wilderness could not have been better! I was in heaven.

After our breakfast mom picked out the varieties of apples she wanted for pies and applesauce. She acted like getting a bushel of fresh apples at the orchard was a treat, but I knew I had already enjoyed the real treat.

You may dream of breakfast at Tiffany's or lunch with the president, but I wish I could to go back to my childhood and have doughnuts and fresh apple cider at Sietsma's Orchard.