The last pick!

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Yesterday was my last Fruit Share pick of the season.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful pick. The tree was huge and hadn't been pruned in a long time, so most the apples were twenty to thirty feet off the ground.

But they were bright red and the ones the other three pickers and I sampled were both crisp and sweet.

So, with three ladders, two small children, four (adult) pickers, and one fruit picker tool we managed to pick approximately 150 pounds of apples.

This was one tree that was unaffected by the odd weather this spring and summer. In Winnipeg, the Goodland or Norland varieties were ripe two to three weeks earlier than normal. On the picks I went to, the apples were ripe but not very sweet. (I also heard more than a few stories about trees that didn't produce any fruit this year...)

These apples were juicy and had a taste similar to honey or a sweet white wine.

It was a great last pick. I had two other apple picks and a grape pick, but this was the best one, I think, both in terms of the company and the fruit.

I don't have grand plans for what I'm going to do with the fruit. I'm going to core/slice some of them and then dry the slices on my food dehydrator. I don't have enough room in my fridge to store them there, so I'm going to try the box + layers-of-newspaper method and see how far into the winter they'll last...