30 Aug Butler’s Orchard: Peaches, Berries & Potatoes… Oh My!
A few weeks ago, I had a hankering for my mom’s famous peach pound cake. Baking it was no problem — I’ve been making it annually for the past few years — but I had a dilemma. I needed peaches.
It’s the peak of summer and ordinary grocery store peaches just wouldn’t do. Only peaches from an orchard would suffice. So of course, in typical Packed Suitcase style, my craving quickly turned into another local adventure.
My favorite local travel pal, Scott, and I dutifully researched the best places within an hour radius from DC and while pick-your-own peaches aren’t really available in this area, many orchards offered fresh peaches in their markets. So, peaches aside, it became about what else we could do built around an orchard visit.
After searching, I found two options.
Option 1: The “make a day of it” option (In case you didn’t know, my first instinct is always to go overboard…)
Orchard: Catoctin Mountain Orchard
Hike: Long Option: Catoctin Mountain Park
Short Option: Cunningham Falls
Cider Tasting: Distillery Lane Ciderworks
An afternoon at one of my favorite places: Butler’s Orchard.
The reason why I love Butler’s Orchard is that there is always something going on. Whether there’s a festival (their autumn pumpkin festival is one of the best in the area) or you just want to get out in nature and pick some produce, you’re pretty much guaranteed a few hours of agricultural fun.
Plus, Butler’s has a killer market with freshly picked produce as well as jams, baked goods and other delicious treats (open May through December).
So, long story short, Option 2 won (I had a peach pound cake to bake, after all!) and off we went to Butler’s.
On this August day, we could pick-our-own blackberries, flowers, raspberries and POTATOES.
Yes, you read that right. Potatoes.
First stop: Potato town
How do you dig for potatoes? I guess these shovels and… what are those pointy things called, anyway?… would be helpful.
When it comes to digging potatoes, you just have to jump right in. Do I look like I know what I’m doing?
Ah, there they are.
Butler’s has both yellow and purple potatoes. Obviously, I left with a huge bag of both… $19 worth!
Seriously… it was so fun!
After we had our fill of potatoes, we were off to pick raspberries!
A lot of others had the same idea, but the field was so big that it wasn’t a problem. Plenty of raspberries for all.
A quick video I created about picking (and eating) raspberries!
My box of hard-earned raspberries… for under $5, it was a fab deal!
After digging potatoes and picking raspberries, it was time to get peaches! The Butler’s Market was our final stop.
Have a berry good day? We sure did.
Is there another mid-Atlantic orchard to should add to the list? Please help me out and share in the comments below!
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