Friday 4 October 2013

Common Sense Picknik



It was the weekend of the Autumnal Equinox and there had been a rather splendid harvest moon the night before. Now it was overcast but warm.

A couple of weeks earlier, we had been on a bike ride to check out the big apple tree on the Little Common. It was loaded but the apples were not quite ripe yet, so we planned to come back soon.
On our return we bought a small group of friends along to help us pick some fruit and generally have a run and ride about. There was a large amount of windfalls on the floor when we arrived.
I guess we must have spent an hour or two picking, chatting and catching the big apples that were thrown down out of the venerable tree.  The kids ran about making the most of the last Blackberries too. After Michaelmas day they should not be picked as the Devil has (allegedly) spat on them.
Southampton Common is a very pleasant environment to pick fruit in and several passers-by stopped to see what we were up to and comment on our activities. There was even a report of another big tree that we need to check out soon.
In the end we picked about 46 Kgs of beautiful apples, the best of which will go into store for the winter months; the remainders will go into the cider press! 
Even with our harvest haul, the bulk of fruit was still left on the tree, there is also plenty on the ground for anyone without pickers.

2 comments:

  1. Any chance you could do a post on the storage unit you have for apples? I am interested in trying to make one over summer (from Australia) for the autumn harvest.

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  2. Hi

    No problem, and glad you are not a hippie ;-)

    My mum just uses greengrocer's boxes with apples wrapped in newspaper . As long as they don't touch, you can remove rotten ones before rot spreads.

    The wooden store is like a skeleton chest of drawers. My friend donated it and it was very rickety and had worm but I patched it up.

    Look at the following posts and you should get the picture...

    http://theurbaneforager.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/apple-attack.html

    http://theurbaneforager.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/cider-inside-er-insides.html

    http://theurbaneforager.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/hedge-end-apples.html

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