Can you even call yourself a New Englander if you didn't go apple picking this weekend?

Family, foliage, art, apples, and finding beauty in the light existentialism of the Hudson Valley

Oct 20, 2025

Yesterday, as I was packing a hybrid Volvo SUV with freshly picked, locally sourced apples, I couldn’t help but wonder… when did this become my wild weekend plans?

And, am I a dad influencer now?

The answer is yes. And yes. And I’m thrilled.

What a picturesque weekend for New York to flex some suburban muscle! Nick, our kiddos, and I went upstate to visit his mother, Leigh, and her partner, Don, for some family fun and apple picking. (I’m not exactly sure where—somewhere you end up after driving two hours up Route 9.) The foliage was so cinematic, I felt like we were shooting a brochure for the New England tourism board.

Seriously. Look at our drive:

(No, Mom. I wasn’t behind the wheel when I took this picture. Save your comments!)

Fun fact: apples aren’t native to North America. The wild crabapples you sometimes see in parks are, but the juicy, glossy varieties people love to pick every fall trace their roots (literally!) to the mountains of what’s now Kazakhstan. European settlers brought apple seeds and young trees to the colonies in the 1600s, especially in New England, where they were prized for eating fresh, making cider, and preserving through the long winters.

All weekend, I kept thinking of one specific scene from one episode from Season 9 of Family Guy. Brian Griffin is sitting on a dock with a martini, and he sighs, “The summer tourists are gone, and we finally have the town to ourselves before those idiots from New York show up to watch the leaves change and take over the whole place.”

As always, Family Guy gets it right.

Keeping in my newfound Substack spirit of oversharing, here’s what we did, saw, ate, drew, and thought about this weekend:

WHAT WE DID

Apple picking was the weekend’s big event. Leigh organized a visit to Mead Orchards in Tivoli, New York, which dates back to 1916 and grows over 40 varieties of apples. Nick’s sister Jesse, her husband Zach, and their daughter Callie joined us—and they were having a gourd-eous time. (That’s a pumpkin pun. Get it?)

(Don’t you roll your eyes at me. I’m a dad now, I can make dad jokes!)

If you really think about it, isn’t apple picking just paying a farmer to do their job? I don’t remember doing this sort of thing growing up in Missouri—autumn there was more about keg parties than corn mazes. But I know, I know; this is a rite of passage around here. And who am I to argue with tradition? And look at these smiles from the ladies of the family!

In addition to the apple-picking—which kept the kids occupied for about 17 minutes—Mead has a hayride, a corn maze, a sunflower maze, and a row of playhouses that our kids stormed like D Day. At one point, I snuck off to sample the cider doughnuts that, according to one online review, “taste like Christmas and Halloween had a baby.” Sure.

We had plans to check out the annual Sheep and Wool festival in Rhinebeck, but the kids were melting down, and traffic was bonkers because of a local “No Kings” protest. (Favorite sign: “Tylenol is better than tyranny.” ) I saw

Ella Emhoff

went, so let’s see if she writes about it.

Back at the house, the kids staged a full-scale invasion of Leigh’s dress-up closet. Grace went straight for the accessories (shocking, I know), while Noah spent the afternoon in angel wings. Take that, Victoria’s Secret.

WHAT I READ

My mother-in-law worked in publishing for nearly half a century, so it’s no surprise she has a library that Nancy Meyers would die for. (I’m still very much not over Diane Keaton’s passing, by the way. I’m so with you,

Evan Ross Katz

.) She has a divine armchair in a shocking shade of pink that Elsa Schiaparelli would have loved, which is tucked into a corner with floor-to-ceiling shelves exploding with books.

This is where I’d planned to curl up to catch up on my reading—I’ve been looking for a quiet moment to inhale Matt Tyrnauer’s recounting of Gore Vidal’s final feud in Vanity Fair. But all the adults ended up in the family room so we could keep one eye on our papers and another on the kiddie chaos. (They don’t make ‘em like Gore anymore, do they?)

I also brought Tom Freston’s new memoir, Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu. (Penguin Random House, out next month).

A few weeks ago, I saw a galley of this book at a mutual friend’s house and came down with a terrible case of “galley envy”—did you read Air Mail’s story on that phenomenon? I called Tom to tell him I had memoir FOMO, so he made it up to me by dropping off one of the first finished hardcovers himself. The book is his rollicking account of MTV’s early chaos, cultural revolutions, and accidental genius—with a rather dashing cover photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

In the end, I’m not sure what impressed me more: his luscious auburn locks in the 1970s and ’80s, or his firsthand tales of adventures through Afghanistan and East Africa. The book fits nicely into what has come 2025’s series of memoirs from nostalgic swashbucklers—I’m looking at you, Graydon, Keith, and Barry.

WHAT WE SAW

My friend Dan Colen organized his first-ever biennial, the Sky High Farm Biennale, in a historic apple warehouse in Germantown, New York. It’s nearly 50,000 square feet of contemporary art and agricultural awareness—half fine art, half pastoral poem. I wrote about Dan and his farm-as-art practice in the May issue of Harper’s Bazaar, and it felt good to see it all this come to life.

(Check out that interview below:)

AND ANOTHER THING

Dan Colen is the biggest, nicest, most marvelous artist farmer you’ll ever meet

Imagine your craziest friend from college–the guy who drank the most, stayed up the latest, and partied the hardest. Now picture him 10 years later, sober and a super successful artist. Now, picture that same guy 10 years after that, living in upstate New York, and building a farm community as an extension of his artistic practice, with the sole purpose…

4 months ago · 21 likes · 4 comments · Derek C. Blasberg

Dan walked my family through the show, explaining how every artist donated work to benefit Sky High Farm’s mission of combating food insecurity. It’s a clever inversion of the art world’s usual economy—beauty and generosity feeding the same ecosystem.

Anne Imhof’s installation on the first floor created an industrial maze (I loved the photographs from Ryan McGinley), and the second floor featured a mirrored floor installation by Rudolf Stingler and paintings from Dan’s old buddy Nate Lowman. My kids were most impressed by a video installation by Jack Donoghue, which they thought featured singing and dancing M&Ms. In reality, it was a dancing OxyContin pill warning us about the harmful effects of opioid addiction, but you take your audience where you find them.

The exhibition technically closed last week, which made us the last ever visitors. Bittersweet! Congratulations to the entire Sky High community. If you have a moment, check out their merch shop.

WHAT WE ATE

Confession: this was not a nutritionally enlightened weekend.

On Saturday, we stopped for lunch at Del’s Roadside Creamery. I had my usual double cheeseburger (I’m nothing if not consistent), while Nick bravely ordered a quinoa salad—which, against expectations for an outdoor eatery, was delicious. The kids shared a grilled cheese and then each had a scoop of cookies-and-cream ice cream. (I often wonder what we’d do if our kids were lactose intolerant?)

On Sunday, we had a big breakfast—Nick makes a mean scrambled eggs—so we indulged the kids’ request for ice cream for lunch at Fortunes, a tiny yellow storefront that’s become a Hudson Valley cult favorite. Everything is made from scratch using local dairy and seasonal fruit, and the flavors are as eccentric as they sound: labneh with sour cherries, tahini-oat-milk honeycomb, and a dark-chocolate vegan option that’s genuinely decadent. The shop is open late, which makes it the perfect final stop after a day of leaf-peeping and apple-picking. Noah ordered and finished two scoops of an ice cream made of turmeric, ginger, and coconut, and gobbled down the whole thing.

(FYI I had to look up what labneh was too.)

Since it was my first trip to Tivoli, Dan kindly offered to play tour guide on our second day. We took all the kiddos to the Tivoli Memorial Park and a strolled through town—cute post office, delicious cured meats at Club Sandwich.

Main Street felt like a film set for a coming-of-age movie about morally enlightened college kids. (Bard is nearby, of course.) We met lots of friendly young people and groovy old people—and a few dogs in Halloween costumes—coexisting in various layers of what I can only assume was organically dyed cotton and locally sourced wool.

Lastly, I’m a fan of the work of Helen Marden, an artist who, with her husband, the late, great Brice Marden, has been a longtime resident and community hero. So Dan took me to her shop, The Corner Store. I had my eye on a few local ceramics, but traveling with two four-year-olds isn’t exactly conducive to browsing breakables.

WHAT WE WATCHED

After the kids’ bedtime sugar highs finally subsided, we put on Pixar’s Up. I’d forgotten how perfect that film is—the first ten minutes alone should have won every single Oscar the year it came out. (I just looked it up—can you believe that movie is from 2009?) Still a masterpiece, still devastating, still worth the emotional damage.

Once the kids were asleep, we started watching Task. But just as it was getting good, I heard a loud thud from the kids’ room and bolted upstairs. Turns out all was fine—the sound machine, perhaps our single most critical travel item, had fallen off the dresser. The kids were still out cold. I thought about going back down to finish the episode, but I never did find out who killed the drug dealers. Parenthood: 1, plot twists: 0.

WHAT WE DREW

The kids have been on an Americana kick lately, so we spent an afternoon drawing patriotic emblems: bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty, and an ambitious attempt at the Liberty Bell that ended up looking more like a melting pumpkin. (Which, in fairness, feels very on-brand for 2025.) We also painted pumpkins because ‘tis the season.

As we drove down the Taconic Parkway, I had these unexpected feelings of pride and peace about being a proper family. So, this is what adulthood feels like? Honestly, it felt awesome.

At that moment, Noah got carsick and threw up his turmeric ice cream all over the backseat.

Welcome home!

Thank you for reading all the way to the bottom!

I’ll be back soon with more fashion news.

What did everyone think of the looks at the Academy Museum Gala? I was excited to see some of the designs from the Paris debuts make it to real life—I loved Ayo Edebiri in Chanel and Greta Lee in Dior. (But I’m not sure I can say all of them translated, sorry!)

Please don’t forget to like this post and tell all your friends about your favorite new Substacker. (That’s me.)