My favorite season is autumn and when I realized I would be in Paris for autumn this year, thus getting to actually experience more than 2 weeks of the season, I was ecstatic.

* For those of you who have never heard of CANADA, autumn goes a little like this: it’s warm and sunny, it’s cold and all the leaves have changed, 4 days pass, it’s dark at 4pm, snow, winter. The whole process takes just under two weeks, but boy, do we come alive during that time.

A few weeks ago, we decided to make a pit stop at Gally Farm, just outside of Paris, on the way to a family birthday.

I foolishly assumed we would kill an hour or two looking at apples and maybe grab a pumpkin. I was so wrong. This place is massive and by massive, I mean, massive and huge and they grow every fruit and vegetable under the sun and we should have spent an entire 10 hours there. It is the apple orchard of my dreams. The corn maze of all corn mazes. Row upon row of leeks and peppers and radishes, oh my!

Okay. Getting off topic, but this place was a dream for anyone who loves fall and pumpkins and that whole festive-y, Thanksgiving-y, new season-y feeling. Since that is basically my vibe, 365, we soaked it in and then showed up to the family surprise party just in time to meet the birthday girl in the parking lot and ruin the actual surprise. But hey! I got a pumpkin!

Since I was the one in my element here, I took the lead and demanded to be brought by wheelbarrow, to the apples decided to peruse the apple picking section first.

This was a bad move, because we were so excited by our newfound independence (“We can just pick ANY of these apples?? And take them home??”) that we didn’t realize how big this place was. Since I was probably a farmer in a past life, or at least a vegetarian, I made it my mission to see the entire rest of the farm.

We took off like giddy school children, pulling and picking and plucking everything we could out of the ground and then realizing after, that we actually had to use all this stuff once we got home.

I desperately wanted to pick ALL of the brussel sprouts choux de bruxelles, but the field was swarming with tiny white bugs, straight out of a horror film. Who am I to risk my life when grocery stores exist? Plus, I was wearing the absolute wrong shoes….(I said I was a farmer in a past life…)

We ended up getting a few bags of fruit and vegetables and a proper pumpkin for an insanely cheap price and I got to run through a corn field and scare some crows (BONUS). I also picked more radishes than I could find recipes for (radish soup?), got pushed around in a wheelbarrow AND learned how to use a hoe. Autumn in Paris is brilliant and it’s not even close to being over.

♥