Dont take the title of this blog literally. It's still quite the opposite of a slow down in terms of work being done. We just finished out early picking of honey crisps called color picking. We're basically only choosing the apples on the tree that have the right amount red coloring on them. This is something the consumer market dictates as higher grade apples even though the taste isn't significantly different from the apples with a little less red coloring on them. So off we went and set up for picking. We had a bunch of white reflectors called extenday out in the rows of trees to encourage coloring from the ground up that had to be tucked away and rolled out again once we were done picking certain fruits.
Extenday for apple coloring
Once the reflectors were removed they were off to the races. Not really because unlike the pears and Gala apples that we picked prior to this. We required them to be a little more picking and actually take their time. We had a rough first go at it and a lot of the apples being picked looked very green. We walked each row and slowly talked to the foreman and pickers to physically show what apples were okay and which ones to leave on the tree. After a few times they got the hang of it and we were getting the color we wanted.
Decent ratio of coloring
You can see in the photo above that some of the apples were still rather green. Thats not to say they're bad apples we just wanted them more glowing red like the ones to the far left corner. Sometimes grabbing the apples that are not ready is impossible. Some of these trees are so loaded to apples that when you pick one the other once close to it comes with it or it'll fall to the ground. So we don't expect a bin that's just fully red in color. Honey crisps right now are the bread and butter on most apple orchards. The domestic market is in such high demand for these right now that its almost impossible for orchards to not have any honey crisp trees and expect to survive.
Our first load of honey crisps
There is so much hard work put into this time of the year. Everything that was done before harvest up to the heavy lifting that is done by all the pickers. The stuff you don't see or think about when you're purchasing apples at the grocery store. The people that actually feed America today is something to think about the next time you buy your produce. Its not even just apples. All produce. Know where your food comes from and the people that put work into providing it for you.
Full bins = happy people