I hope everyone is enjoying "Stone Fruit Season" as much as I am! As a young girl, I lived in a house surrounded on both sides and behind, by a seemly endless apricot orchard. There was also a large walnut orchard across the street -- an almond orchard up the road to the left -- and cherry orchards to the right. I was completely immersed in orchard life and loved it!!.
I well remember all the seasons that passed and all the hard work involved tending the trees before harvest season arrived. In summer, the orchards are humming with activity, as they’re irrigated, monitored for pests and pruned to optimize production as the fruit grows to maturity. Summer is peak harvest time. Growers check the fruit day by day, waiting for the proper color, size and maturity to be reached. A single orchard will often see at least three pickings over the course of a week to ten days so the fruit is harvested at just the right time. When harvest arrives, the fruit is harvested from the trees by hand using totes or buckets. The mature fruit is carefully selected from the tree, piece by piece. And this is only during harvest season. Year long the orchard is plowed and tended with great care.
So the next time you reach for that wonderful summer fruit (hopefully local & organic) take a moment to think about and appreciate the year-long process that nature and the farmer went to and send a little "thank you" out into the world. I know I will!!
Happy Friday!!
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3 comments:
We adore stone fruit season - in WA it is awesome!! And we deeply appreciate those who bring it to us - we've often stopped along the road to personally thank the pickers - they seem to have the hardest job with the least thanks.
Great post Sabina! All that lovely fruit ("stone" fruit) looks amazing! And I really didn't know all the work that goes into taking care of an orchard and the yearly harvest - shout out of thanks indeed! What a lucky girl to have grown up with orchards all around you!
What a beautiful homage to your orchard-growing past and present appreciation ...
And what lovely words - for such wonderful gifts from the earth (and sky)!
I love stone fruit. The nectarine is my favorite fruit, followed only by its cousin - the peach.
I am not as fond of apricots and cherries as I am of nectarines - they seem to me to be the perfect fruit and I always want to eat it in the summer. I wish it were summer all year long and I would eat a nectarine every day. Freshly (organic) picked would be a dream.
Sabina, hope you and your family are having a fabulous summer day.
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