Eunsung Apple Farm

On Saturday the girls and I went a a field trip to an apple farm near Yesan, South Korea. I had asked Yahaira's piano teacher's husband if there were places to go apple picking. He graciously found us a place to make mini apple pies, apple jam and pick apples. John and Christina came along and were our Korean guides for the afternoon. They are so friendly and welcoming. I love seeing them every weekday afternoon for piano lessons. I posted the apple farm field trip on our local homsechool group page and got some other families to come along too. We packed a picnic dinner and just enjoyed ourselves.

Yahaira, Christina and her daughter

 At the farm, you go as a group, having a set tour time. Ours was 3pm. We started off by making mini apple pies first. You are provided with all the ingredients and kitchen tools. A lady gave a demonstration, in English for all us English speaking gringos (oh wait, that's a Spanish term). The apple pies cost 5,000 won each.

After making the apple pies, we went upstairs and got to make apple jam. Well, the apple jam was 95% made already, we just got to finish boiling it down. I mean really, you don't make an entire pint of apple jam in 10-15 minutes (start to finish). The apple jams cost 5,000 won each.

We took a tractor ride around the orchard to where we were going to pick apples. In reality, we could have walked the few hundred yards to the left to get to the apple picking spot, but a tractor ride is always fun and we got to see the entire orchard!

The owner gave us a demonstration on how to correctly pick the apples, you bend the apple upwards to snap the stem off the branch. If the stem remains on the branch, you have to physically remove it by hand, otherwise the branch will not produce apples the following year. See, you learn things when you're having fun:) It was 10,000 won to pick 5 apples (so 2,000 won per apple). The apples were HUGE! Think US honeycrisp apples but even bigger. They are juicy and delicious.

Finally, we took a short walk to the top of the orchard, spread out on the lawn and ate a delicious picnic dinner. One lady came well prepared with a blanket and plenty of food to share. Such a blessing! The kids got to run around and play. They checked out some guest house type thing that was being built too.

The Apple Farm was an hour drive from Pyeontaek (though coming back we hit traffic, making it take a little longer). You can click on the map to see the location. When you turn off of 40 and onto the rode to take you to the apple farm, there are a lot of apple farms in that area. You have to wind around the road then turn left and go up a hill and left again once past the long row on pine trees to get to the building entrance.

Yes the apples may be "expensive", but you are paying to have a Korean adventure. You also don't have to do anything you don't want to. So if you only want to make a pie and not jam, no problem. Or if you only want to do pies and jam but no apples, again, no problem. You choose how much you spend. *Another note, there is an apple winery too. However, having so many small children in our group, we did not get to tour the winery (which is not a loss in my opinion).*

Prices:

• 1 mini apple pie 5,000 won
• 1 pint apple jam 5,000 won
• 5 large apples 10,000 won