This afternoon I was so exhausted that I conked out in the living room on the recliner, and didn’t even know I’d fallen asleep until after I woke up! 

We had a busy, busy day picking fruit today.  (And I’m going to be a lot busier at the beginning of next week dealing with all of it!)  At about 12:30, we stopped whatever we were in the middle of to go fruit picking. We started with picking Granny Smith and Mcintosh apples from one person’s yard, and while the kids picked, I ended up having two very nice and substantial conversations with neighbors in the area about homeschooling.  One is now planning to call me to get specific suggestions for getting started with her boys. 

It took a while to do all the picking, since we’d picked all the apples that were easily reached without a ladder a few weeks ago, but we picked about 60 pounds between the two kinds of apples.  Then we went home, dropped off the 13 year old, picked up the 15 year old (who stayed behind with the sleeping toddler and infant), and went to pick pears.  Why would I do this all on the same day?  Because the woman who lived next door to the place we picked apples was so appreciative we were picking them (because the fallen ones were right next to her driveway and attracted bees) and she offered to let us borrow her ladder.  Though she couldn’t part with it overnight, she was willing to let us borrow it for the rest of the afternoon.  Since we also picked all the pears we could reach without a ladder several weeks ago, we needed a ladder for that, too.

So off we went to pick pears, after switching the two oldest.  I didn’t think we’d get many, but surprise – my 9 and 15 year olds managed to get an astounding 110 pounds worth.  Yes, really.   

Then we went home to get more boxes, because whatever we took with us was filled up.  Everyone else elected to stay home (with my 9 yo complaining that he didn’t get to finish his work before we left, poor boy), and ds15 and I went to the final fruit picking stop of the day – to someone else with yet a different kind of apple.  (I told you, I had to take advantage of having the use of the ladder while I had it.)  I don’t know what they are, but they have an attractive pink tinged flesh and are better cooked than fresh.  These were the easiest to pick, because they grew in clusters, but were also the buggiest apples of all the trees we had seen, so we didn’t pick nearly the amount we could have if we weren’t as selective as we were.  We picked 30 pounds of those.

Then we returned the ladder, we went home, I took ds to meet his learning partner, and then spent a half hour going through two books of canning recipes.  Right after that, I just fell asleep.  I don’t know if it was doing all the picking or thinking about preserving them all that caused me to feel so tired! 

My kids have been munching all afternoon on them, my baby has been strewing them all over the living room floor (they’re lined up in boxes but haven’t been put away downstairs yet), and I’m trying to figure out the best way to use them all.  Two hundred pounds of fruit isn’t an insignificant project, but one must make hay while the sun shines, you know.  🙂  I’ll start on that project at the beginning of next week, and let you know what I end up doing. 

Avivah