As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Being poor affords TL and myself the opportunity to have to engage in things and do things that the 99% of society are either too timid or lazy to engage in. For example the Obama Trump inflation has literally priced fruit out of most people's diet. I mean the 98 cents a pound crapper apples are now 5 dollars for 4 pounds and you can forget about Minnesota bred Honey Crisp as they are 3 to 5 dollars a pound.
Enter into this Bun.
Bun is a not too distant relative of mine, with his nephews who will not sell their homestead to us. Never mind they do not live on the place, live in another town, and the gorgeous Victorian house is falling down. Bun though will allow us to pick apples off his tree, at least when Mom asks he does, and more to the point, now that Bun is in the geezer home waiting for death, his nephew seemed not too enthused, but allowed us to go over and pick some apples.
I like Bun's place. There are wild turkeys on it, a small creek or crick as they are called, and deer. Deer we know because they eat the apples and poop on the windfall apple resting places.
This though is about fruit pickers as TL and I splurged 20 dollars for a DO IT BEST, pictured above, with a telescoping light aluminum pole, which is heavy on the light side at you do not want to do chin ups on it, but it screw tightens into place, and it surprised me.
What surprised me is my neighbor, Mousie, yes Mousie because he chattered so fast like a mouse in every conversation had a fruit picker which I hated as a child. It seemed so slow, but this one we got I simply delight in using it. It works very nice on non ripened pears, the key being soft fruit will get holes poked in it, as these apples which are not that soft, but had the death grip on that tree and were stuck in places I do not know how an apple grows, got some scuffs and holes poked on them.
If you just keep at it, you will be surprised how much fruit you can pick in 45 minutes. Bun's tree which is just a semi dwarf, meaning about 25 feet at the top and about that big around, we picked 4 five gallon buckets of premium apples off of it, and I filled one of those cow molasses lick tubs which is 5 pails of apples too of windfalls in that time, with apples galore on the tree and a tub and a half on the ground.
This is a Minnesota Haralson, which is the second generation of Minnesota apples. OK I love conversing about apples, so here is a lesson in fruity fruits.
In the beginning there was Eve and her nice fruit......too far back, ok in the beginning was Rome and they had the Fameuse apple or Snow Apple, they brought to Angleland. From that the English happened upon the Pippin line of apples, which ended up in America.
Soon enough the Americans in the Northeast were finding apples that were growing on their own and apples they grew from seed which made those original European apples taste like the sour old things they were.
Thomas Jefferson's favorite apple was a real gem in the Esopus Spitzenberg apple which is really a spectacular apple in apple natural selection.
It was from this seedstock that a Minnesotan obtained like a bushel of apple seeds from the east and planted them. Most apples only were hardy to zone 5 and Minnesota is zone 4 to zone 3. In that, one apple appeared in the Wealthy apple. The apple Americans chose though was an Iowa seedling named Delicious, which is a very good apple when fresh, but has been so engineered it is horrid now.
The Minnesotans in all their wealth from God though went at it in breeding apples, and from their Wealthy hardy stock arose the second generation in the Haralson, which is a most interesting battle of sweet, citrus, crisp, juicy delight.
TL loves these apples and they are wonderful fresh eating, juicing and for making crisps.
Canada had a lovely McIntosh, but it is early and a softer apple, which is not as pleasant. It makes great jelly though and applesauce.
These apples became the Fireside, which honestly when raised in Minnesota soils is the sweetest, crispest and best apple ever. You can not though convince the University of Minnesota of this, as their Honey Crisp and Zestar is what they worship at, and they have a 4th generation coming out, which they deem as better yet.
Personally Honey Crisp is not that friendly as a home orchard apple as the trees are brittle.
My apples are not anything with names. They are apples that were seeds off of trees I obtained seeds from like a Chestnut Crab which is a lovely apple, like a small Honey Crisp, which one grew to my lovely and best apple tree which is tough as nails and in most years produces a pile of apples.
Not this year though after 2 heavy years, so it was over to Bun's to raid his tree. We picked 4 buckets of extra fancy apples which would run at cheap prices of 100 dollars, which will last us into December, feeding on them heavy. 100 dollars is a good thing to be saving.
This fruit picker is exactly the thing for all occasions. I have not tried it out on peaches, as this is not peach friendly country. I use this quite heavy in pulling on things and and have not bent the tines. The one I have has a foam in the bottom and I left the Do It Best cardboard in it to cushion the fruit.
I can get 4 big apples into it, so it is not up and down all the time and picking is fast enough for us. We just did ours this morning and I would not mind doing it again, which we might, but I want to leave some apples for the deer too.
The thing is people are so damned lazy now that they will not go out and pick an apple, just buy them in the store. Bun was good about putting a moth catcher out there, so these apples are all worm free. It is why I was picking up the windfalls for the goats and chickens as apples left on the ground make worms a problem.
It is just something I do not understand in people not picking their own fruit. This is easy and at 20 bucks that picker paid for itself already. I grew up on a sharecropper place where we had nothing, so I have been phobic about planting things for years. I can not afford a 50 dollar apple tree, but I sure can plant seeds which will produce as good as fruit as I am eating, and if not, I sure can bud graft a good apple onto some throw back tree.
When we get our place, I am going to be planting hundreds of apple trees, as they just have such a nice frequency and nothing is so pretty as apple trees in bloom or filled with apples.
As we drove home, I noticed a line of trees on a neighbor's farm, and they were Mountain Ash. I was thinking they were fruit trees, and here are those red berry things that are about as worthless as a Trump promise as of late. Why someone would plant almost 200 dollar worth of trees you can only look at is just beyond me.
When we were in the metro it was just as bad, as I think I saw in an area of of 3 million souls, 2 apple trees and sorry ones at that. What the hell kind of people is that who do not plant apple or peach trees.
Then again maybe they are like TL's old man, whose nickname is Johnny Applekiller. I swear a more brown thumbed man does not walk the planet. He put in fruit trees and they are the same size they were 15 year ago. Good thing he is a genius in math, as he sure ain't got the number down on apple trees.
I live in a place where people plant fruit trees, and there is usually one around some place that the people allow others to raid. Like the gal I was confirmed with was telling me, she picks fruit in a little town as the guy there let her and another woman raid his tree to their heart's desire.
So the Do It Best fruit picker with telescoping pole is a thumbs up in the one we got from the farm store. It has paid for itself the first time out, better than a ladder and the only thing better at picking apples are Daisy and Baby Belle, but I tend to not like having cow slop on my fruit and once they go in the mouth, it is a hard time trying to get them back out the way they went in.
Nuff Said
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