SARANAC LAKE — Every year for the last decade, the kids at St. Bernard’s School have pilgrimaged to Rulfs Orchard in Peru to press cider, carve pumpkins, do some fall crafts and eat the farm-made apple cider doughnuts. Not this year, thanks to COVID-19. So on Thursday, Rulfs came to them.

The folks at the orchard delivered pumpkins, apples and boxes of those doughnuts (plain and cinnamon sugar) to the Catholic school. St. Bernard’s Principal Andrea Kilbourne-Hill’s parents, Dr. Barry and Stephanie Kilbourne, brought in a cider press from a nearby farm and set it up on the playground. There was a tent for the crafts, and pumpkins were spread out near the swingset.

Kids in masks lined up to crank the cider press, then pick up a doughnut. As Stephanie halved the Macintosh apples and Barry and Kilbourne-Hill helped the students turn the press, sugar-dusted kids scattered across the playground, swinging mid-size pumpkins like bowling balls.