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| First apple haul of the season. |
I love hiking in the forest. I also love apples. Therefore, it is a great day when I can go for a hike, AND pick apples.
My last hike in the woods I checked out some new areas for apple picking. There are apple trees everywhere around here, and it is fun to find new trees.
I found at least one promising tree, and stopped to fill my pack. That was at the start of my hike, so I spent the next hour and a half carrying my haul up and down and all around.
The extra weight made my hike a more concentrated work out than usual, and I felt it.
When I got home I weighed my apples. It turned out that I had been carrying 2.7 kilos of fruit on my back, not a huge amount, but enough to make a difference.
I crossed "apples" off my grocery shopping list, along with what we are harvesting from our garden:
- tomatoes (which I brought in today due to a frost warning for tonight),
- kale,
- beets,
- potatoes,
- basil (also brought in to keep from the frost), and
- green onions.
I am enjoying being a producer of food, rather than a consumer of food. It is very satisfying to grow it, pick it, cook it, and eat it. Can't buy that feeling at the big box grocery store with any amount of cash.
Doing it ourselves means no (or low) cost, no packaging, no trucking across the country, no middle person, no corporations, and no chemicals.
All that (or is it "none of that"?), and spending glorious quality time outdoors.
Happy Fall to all Northerners,
and Happy Spring to those of you in the south.
Congratulation on just about finishing another voyage around the Sun. May there be many more.
How wonderful!
ReplyDeleteBountiful nature will take care of us, if we take care of it.
DeleteI just picked another peck of figs off the neighbors tree. Then I went to our local grocery store and saw figs in a little plastic carton that held 10 figs for $6.99. I have been eating 5-6 fresh figs a day and have now dried two pecks. Also picked fresh pears and am drying them. When I drive by an apple tree that is just going to waste I cringe.
ReplyDeleteI would love to be able to pick figs off the tree. The apple trees in the forest here are grazed by deer. Perhaps black bears, too.
DeleteI love that you have wild apples to pick on your hike! I wanted to thank you for your blog. When life feels too overwhelming I come back to your blog and reread your posts as they instantly help me to refocus. So thank you. You and Linda are inspirations.
ReplyDeleteYou are so welcome. Thanks for being part of what we are doing here.
DeleteWonderful! Apple season is a favorite of mine too. Our neighborhood has many fruit trees - some seem to be tended by their owners, some are just dropping fruit (good food!) on the ground. Portland, Oregon (near where I live) has a non-profit company called the Portland Fruit Tree Project. They organize volunteers to go to people's homes and harvest the fruit from their trees (with owner's permission of course). Some of the fruit is given to the home owner, but most of it goes to food banks, and the volunteers get a bit of it too. It's a great idea and a super way to not waste food. https://www.portlandfruit.org/ Thanks for sharing your story and enjoy those lovely apples! - Mary
ReplyDeleteI think it is wonderful that people are organizing to reduce food waste in this way. It is there, why not take advantage of this fruit? Plus, apples are very good for you.
DeleteHappy Fall to you and Linda.
ReplyDeleteI love hearing about your food growing and foraging, it is a wonderful way to live. My son bought me a book on 'weeds' you can forage here in Australia. I was surprised and delighted that some of the weeds growing in my own garden were not only edible but highly nutritious and tasty as well. I think foraging is already becoming more important as here the hotter temperatures are confusing nature and making it harder to grow some crops already.
Madeleine
Foraging is a good idea that keeps getting better. We will have to change our gardens as temperatures rise. I watched all summer as my kale didn't do anything in the heat. As soon as it started cooling down the kale took off.
DeleteIt is hard to imagine "too hot" in our northern climate, but it does happen. A lot of people here say, "More warming!" when the weather is cool, but they don't know what they are saying. Global temperatures are a fine balance that we really shouldn't be messing with.
We will have to change our ways, or die. And if we don't change, we will have to adapt, or die.
Bring on the "weeds". The dandilions were excellent this spring.