Village Harvest

Today we ventured a bit farther afield than our usual stomping grounds, picking a large orange tree in the neighborhood charmingly known as Rosemary Gardens.

We had quite a few people today besides our regular Tuesday crew: a new volunteer, Michelle, who found us through the VH website, Vivian from my knitting group, and four boys and their youth group leader from the River church.

After oranges, we went to a groaning plum tree.

This limb had cracked almost all the way through. Henry thinned the remaining plums so the homeowner would have some to keep without having the bough crash to the ground. We harvested about 220 lbs.

La Jefe picked up some antique wooden orchard ladders from Andy’s Orchard for our new crew in Sunnyvale. They have “Second Harvest Food Bank” stenciled on their poles, a relic of the time when SHFB did its own gleaning.

They weigh a ton.

The last house was grapefruit picked from a treehouse. We got 460 lbs, easily leaving 300 lbs about 20 feet in the air.

The weather this spring was not kind to apricots, and our usual big harvest at Guadalupe Historic Orchard is now officially a bust. But, we are picking an orchard in Los Gatos on Saturday the 27th and one in Palo Alto on Sunday the 28th, then another in Los Altos Hills on Independence Day. We need all the help we can get (the LG orchard has 250 trees.) Volunteers can take home all of the tree-ripened fruit that they like. If you’re interested, please sign up at the VH website, or leave a comment and I’ll email you back with the location.

Harvesting is always fun and social, but apricot picking and sorting is one of the highlights of the VH year, I think.