Summer activity

Had two orange trees out front, i'd climb up and grab one whenever and eat. We kneq people with 'truck farms', little independent growers that sold to local store and at roadside stands. When my sisters helped with harvest they'd come home with bushel of corn, squash or cucumbers or a couple of quarts of strawberries. Had some in meals some fresh as snacks.
 
We have a small peach orchard, 104 trees. A farmer takes care of them and sells the fruit, but we get all we want. Some years more than others. We eat a lot and have made peach wine, peach juice, dried peaches and frozen peaches. The wife makes peach sauce and peach butter. Give a lot away also. 9 different varieties that ripen at different times. Our first ones should be ready within the week and we'll have a plethora of peaches through late September.

Also have a very productive apple tree, again we eat a lot. Dried some and made apple sauce and apple butter as well.

Smaller pear, cherry, plum, and apricot trees too, just eat them. When they get bigger we will have to figure out what to do with em.
feywon said:
Had two orange trees
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When we lived in Florida we had oranges, lemons, and grapefruit. I miss having citrus trees.
 

Picked a lot of fruit on our property. Apples, peaches, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, huckleberries, elderberries, strawberries. Made pies, jams and breads with them. Also prepped some for the freezer to use over winter. Also picked chestnuts.
 
I had a back yard full of citrus (oranges, tangerines, tangelos, grapefruits and lemons) many years ago. Come harvest time, trying to get rid of oranges in Florida was like trying to get someone to take zucchini in Michigan. "Hey, I brought you some oranges/zucchini!" "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU PERVERT!" You finally reach the point of putting them in baskets and leaving them on people's doorsteps at midnight. You think I'm kidding?
 
I grew up in a truck farming community which meant that we could go right to the field and and pick what we wanted. My grandfather "Pop" and I would spend hours roaming and picking. There would be a man in each field that would collect money and give you a bushel basket to pick Peaches, Strawberries, Green beans, Kale and Collard greens even Daffodils. We also had Blackberries, Black cherries and Mulberries growing wild all over the place. The produce offered in the stores around the area were from the same fields. When my mind wanders back to those times I get a warm happy feeling. I miss those times.
 
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I've always liked fruit picking, I get wistful thinking about it.

I still go to a variety of places to get fruit, and the good thing is that the supermarkets grow them in nice cans that sit on my shelf in the pantry quite neatly. 😊
 
We had numerous fruit trees on the farm I grew up on, mostly peaches and apples. We had one really nice pear tree that produced some of the best pears that I have ever eaten to this day. Maybe 10 or 12 at most total. Gramps sprayed the trees himself. I asked about planting a few cherry trees, but Gramps said he didn't want to turn the farm into a fruit farm and he was well off with having what he did. Grandma did a lot of canning back in those days, including veggies that she raised. I would eat the peaches right off the tree after rinsing off the skin.
 
I was lucky we had a plum and pear tree in the back yard. We would often sit in the low branchs and eat fruit right from the tree. My Mom was gifted at canning and preserves. We had a huge second lot, about 1/4 acre of vegetables. If we did not eat it , she canned it for the rest of the year.

Some of the best things she would make was a pear preserve pie. With some homemade vanilla ice cream you could find no better a dessert!
 
We have one very prolific apple tree. It produces large Jonathan apples every year. We spend most of early summer thinning the fruits as they develope on the tree. We also have to pick up green apples that drop off the tree every day. In the next 30-45 days we will have a few dozen ripe apples. We eat some, my wife makes a few apple pies and cobblers that we freeze, of course we eat a couple before we freeze them. What we have left over we give to our adult kids and their families. All in all, it is a wonderful thing to have on our property.
 
I picked lots of fruit on my previous home. Apple trees were all over the place and the surrounding state forest land. I can't tell you how many quarts of applesauce, apple pie filling and just plain apples I canned or stored in the root cellar. I had just about every type of berry that grows in NY. Blackberries were huge and abundant. I miss picking the fruit now.
 
As a kid picking fruit was just part of life. Apple's, pears, cherries, blackberries, blueberries, eldeberries, if it was available we picked it and my mom canned it.

Speaking of canning...my 31 year old daughter just called me yesterday to pick my memory about canning. She and her fiance are big into gardening and want to learn how preserve vegitables longer, and also to make preserves. Makes me happy to see young people interested in things like that.
 
we used to take our kid and grandkids to a farm area that had almost every thing from end of june strawberries to late season apple picking ....always a good time but spouse always picked and bought far more then we could use
had to improvise to use up all the fruit /etc before going bad ..... last year had peach everything jam / milkshake / pies or crisp even just sliced takes a whole year to want to look at another peach.
 

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