Last of the apples

So I made apple crisp from the last of the fall apples I picked on October 3.

As opposed to summer apples like Goodlands, which are juicy and soft and usually last about two weeks, these were crisp and tasted of wine.

I shared bags of these apples with co-workers and friends. I ate them in my lunch all fall, three small  honeyed apples instead of one storebought.

Everyone raved about them and as my supply dwindled, I couldn't quite banish the idea that the homeowner who owned the tree had no use for them.

I'd estimate that there are three groups of people who call Fruit Share: single elderly people who can't pick/use 150 lbs of fruit, people who don't like the fruit from the trees they've inherited from previous homeowners (because they're different, somehow, from the grocery store versions), and those who like their fruit but have too much to use themselves.

I benefit from all three types, so I'm not complaining. I'd far rather that fruit is redistributed to people who will appreciate it than have it get thrown out a bag at at a time throughout the summer.

It just makes me sad that people have become so fixated on what an apple or a pear or a plum "should" look like that they won't eat the fruit growing literally in their own back yard.

Rant over.

On Monday, my writing group was having its December meeting. I am usually the person who brings storebought baking, so I elected to make these last wizened apples into crisp with Mike's help and bring that.

We threw together the ingredients while our dinner was cooking, and since we were both famished, the following hangry conversation ensued:

"Am I supposed to use brown sugar AND maple syrup," M asked, scanning my handwritten notes on the perfect crisp.

"No," I said. "There are multiple recipes on that page. Use THAT one."

"Are you sure I'm not supposed to use maple syrup?"

"JUST BROWN SUGAR."

Even though the topping looked weird and I forgot to add water/sugar/vanilla to the fruit, it was delicious: warm, aromatic & sweet. And M was happy, because I brought back half of it and also some of Kerry Ryan's cookies.

I'm also at the end of my supply of homemade kimchi, so this weekend I'm going to be making more with my sister, who is similarly obsessed with kimchi. (I think that was the biggest souvenir from our year teaching English in South Korea...)

The last pick!

* * *

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...

Grapevine nest

* * *

Towards the end of the pick yesterday, I came upon this nest hidden amidst the grapevines.

The homeowner thought it was maybe a hummingbird nest, as a neighbour had told him he'd seen a hummingbird hanging about the yard. But a friend said it probably wasn't a hummingbird, so I'm left with an architectural-like satisfaction. Nests are like bras. Impossible elaborate constructions, even when empty.

Grape pick!

* * *

Last night's pick was the my third grape pick for Fruit Share in the five summers I've been volunteering.

The first was in my first year of volunteering. The grapes were on the roofline of a shed and we had four adults and three kids to pick a modest amount of grapes. It was great fun and a good introduction to Fruit Share.

The second time, the owner only called us in after the first frost had passed. So the grapes were a deep blue-black and the frost-scorched vines were like just-cooked spaghetti. You barely had to pull on the grape clusters at all...

This time, the vines were still green and I had to burrow under the leaves to get at the grapes. What's more, the grapes were inhabited by wasps, who you'd find with their head buried in grapes. I would tap clusters with my secateurs, hoping to shake free any wasps. I didn't get stung, which I think was luck more than prudence...

The homeowner's yard was wonderful, with a saskatoon tree, three cherry trees, a pear tree, and various other things, in addition to a veg patch and the grapes on the back fence.

The owner also had a poplar and oak seedlings growing, which was sort of neat.

My thanks to the homeowner and to Fruit Share. I think I'm going to make grape pie. M says he wants to make jam...

Post-apple

* * *

After a rain delay on Thursday (read: a day of thunderstorms...), I finally went to my apple pick.

As it turns out, there were two trees tumbling with fruit. And the other picker couldn't make it. So I got M to help me...and we managed to pick to pick approximately 150 pounds of apples in two hours.

We hauled them all home, the car full of airborne sugars, and now I have to wait until Monday to deliver half to Resource Assistance for Youth.

And last week's smallish pears aren't even ripe yet....

Pear Suite

* * *

Today I picked pears for the third time in as many years, this time in a different location.

The pear tree was in a mature garden that had at least a dozen other trees arranged around it. There was a lilac and a plum tree intertwined with the old pear tree, which presented us with a few challenges, picking-wise.

And, as with my apple pick a week or so ago, the pears were smaller-than-they-should-be and green.

But it was a good start to a good day: sunny, windless, mild.

Also, given that it'll be at least a week until the pears are ready, I didn't have to leap into the processing-of-pears. So I went and picked up my special-order Wrinkle in Time t-shirt from McNally's and had a good long walk at Fort Whyte.

(Tuesday I start my four month leave from my day-job. Four months of writing time. I can't quite believe it...)

Thanks to Fruit Share for the pear-picking opportunity, if not the pear-picking poems.

Picking

* * *

So I've been spending a lot of time picking/processing apples and crabapples the past few weeks.

The apples came via Fruitshare and involved picking after a sudden shower, which is why these apples (and all of me) were so wet. We picked approximately 90 pounds of fruit off this tree, the majority of which were smallish and green.

It was fun using my new telescoping picking tool (oooh!) from Lee Valley to reach the apples on the highest branches. And the folks at Resource Assistance for Youth (RAY), were super pleased to receive their share of the fruit...

They're not the best eating apples, so I've been making lots of dried apple rings...

I also picked my M-i-L's crabapples, which were both rosy and plentiful. It's a goddamn pain to cut them up, so I mostly make lazy pink applesauce out of them, which involves cooking the crabapples down and then straining out the cores and seeds.

I was also gifted with a double handful of rhubarb stalks, a bag full of cucumbers and tomatoes, and two jars of jam: pincherry and grape. Which is so very nice...

I'm hoping to get a Goodland apple pick over the next few weeks, even so that we can have a bowl of juicy apples on the counter. I also wouldn't mind picking some chokecherries or plums or pears...

PEARS!

One last pick

After a summer that included picking apples, chokecherries and vegetables for Fruit Share as well as strawberries and pears and apples and cherries on my own time, I had reconciled myself to the fact that it was over.

No more time up in trees, arms over my head. No more frantic processing of ripe/over-ripe fruit.

But then Fruit Share sent out one last call for volunteers.

One of the picks was for frost-sweetened Concord grapes.

How could I resist? Even though I don't love grape jelly, I really wanted to spend a bit more time up on a ladder.

So I spent two hours on a stepladder this past weekend, pulling down perfect handfuls of grapes from a homemade arbour made out of pipes and wire. While wearing a toque and scarf and wishing for more tea.

This was the year of ever-so-slightly confused picks. Where I was the only volunteer that showed up, despite the fact that three or four people had signed up. Where I stopped getting Fruit Share emails. (Ack!)

But that's an almost inevitable outcome, given that Fruit Share consists on hundreds of volunteer pickers and owners-of-fruit. That those hundreds of people are organized by one paid individual and a handful of dedicated volunteers.

This is my third summer with Fruit Share. And I dearly love it, even if I sometimes get tired of having my hands simultaneously wet and prickly post-pick.

The other volunteer on this pick is a Mennonite engineer who recently built himself an apple press. He's going to make wine, so I gave him the lion's share of the grapes. I've made a couple of batches of juice, a few trays of fruit leather, and will likely do jelly yet, even just to give away as gifts.

Yay! Fun!

Chokecherry dilemma

This is my third summer volunteering for Fruit Share.

A week or so ago, I signed up for a chokecherry pick, which was sort of serendipitous because I'd recently returned from a trip to Asesseppi Provincial Park where the wild chokecherries had been ripe.

After fantasizing about filling my hat with berries and making provincial park-flavoured jam, I realized that A) it wasn't right to steal the bears' food (we saw lots of bear scat that seemed to be mostly chokecherry pits) and B) it wasn't right to harvest anything in a provincial park.

Public land = hands off.

So I refrained from picking but retained an image of beatiful purple chokecherry syrup, which a bunch of people on my FB page had raved about.

Anyways, the chokecherry pick happened to be my first of the season, so I was looking forward to the easy comraderie that seems to come from chatting whilst-in-a-tree.

I arrived, talked to the homeowner, and set up my ladder. Twenty minutes later, I was still the only picker present. I checked my email and discovered that the other two pickers wouldn't be able to make it.

And there I was with four trees full of chokecherries, which take some time to pick.

After frantically and unsuccessfully trying to find friends to come help, I picked until it was dark and left with about 5 litres of fruit.

Normally, when on group picks, I volunteer to deliver the third of the harvest that Fruit Share mandates goes to community groups. And, because it's convenient to my house, I usually drop the fruit at Resource Assistance for Youth (or RaY) on Sherbrook, an organization that works with homeless youth.

But this pick was different. First, it was late, and I knew that RaY only accepts donations during the day. Second, although chokecherries look appealing, they are not a fruit to be eaten directly off the tree.

They've got a strange tart flavour and a furry texture, but more than that, the stones are poisonous: "It is thought that the leaves, twigs, and stones of both wild and cultivated species contain cyanide-producing glycoside." (Nova Scotia Museum).

RaY likes fruit that can be put in a bowl and grabbed whenever the youth they serve are hungry. So apples are fine, but crabapples, for instance, are sort of useless. (I convinced someone working in the kitchen once that it was easy to make applesauce out of the crabapples when it looked like they were going to reject my donation...)

Berries that not only have to be processed but that also are actually poisonous when eaten raw would NOT have gone over well.

So I slowly processed the berries over the next few days, making both syrup and jam. I used the Mennonite-grandma recipe my co-worker shared with me and was happy with the results.

But I still had about a third of the berries left last night. And I decided to make jam out of it and then drop the jam off at RaY some time this weekend.

My solution doesn't meet the letter of the Fruit Share rule ("Take 1/3 of the fruit to a community organization of your choice within 24 hours.") but I think it obeys its spirit.

In other news, I've a couple of Fruit Share picks coming up tomorrow, apples and, also, veggies from a u-pick-it farm. It'll be a busy Saturday, but I find climbing into trees very satisfying.

For years, I always felt like I was missing out on local fruit and veg. I don't garden, beyond a small kitchen garden, and our property isn't large or sunny enough to support a fruit tree.

I always tried to hit farmer's markets and stores that carry local produce, but since joining Fruit Share (and signing up for a share via Jonathan's Farm, a CSA that delivers to Wolseley), I know I will always have lots of local fruit and veg.

My thanks to Fruit Share for existing and to Eudora, whose chokecherries they were, for registering her trees!

Picking at LEAST a peck of pears

Here are a few pictures from my second-to-last Fruit Share pick.

These were St. Vital pears. Small handfuls / small green dreams.

And we picked everything but the topmost branches bare in about an hour, which we estimated was approximately 130 pounds of fruit.

My favourite part of the pick was weighing the boxes and buckets of pears on an ancient bathroom scale.

Also, the homeowner's makeshift picking tool, which involved a whittled wooden ruler and a plastic bag attached to a long pole.

Also, how the various children brought along by Fruit share volunteers congregated under the tree's branches, avoiding the pears that rocketed down from high branches and giggling.

Luckily, the pears need a week or so to ripen, because I'm still eating/peeling/freezing my way through two boxes of frost-sweetened apples.

cherry picking

This isn't at all writing and publishing. But this summer, I'm either writing/editing poems for the manuscript I've got due or picking/processing fruit, so...

Specifically, this was my first Fruitshare pick of 2012. Evans cherries near the Winnipeg Rowing Club on Lyndale Drive.

And the homeowner was so lovely. In addition to letting us pillage her cherry tree, she also made us lunch and sent us home with basil seedlings and some cut thyme from her garden.

When I got home, I cleaned and pitted enough cherries for freezer jam and a rustic cherry pie. Which was magnificent, even without ice cream. I picked up vanilla ice creams - soy for M and dairy for Aa and I - on the way home from work today and it was even better.

And even though the pick was two hours in the sunny branches of that tree, I had no desire to make poems out of it/them.

So far this summer, I've also picked/processed strawberries from Boonstra Farms and rhubarb from my friend Perry's yard. Some of which went into the freezer and some of which went into my belly in the form of a multitude of fruit crisps.

Multitude. Of. Fruit. Crisps. It sounds even better the second time.

I'm hoping to get some apples and raspberries before the summer's over, but people have figured out what a good thing Fruitshare is. So there's a lot of competition for each pick.