300 Pounds of Plums!!

You know how sometimes in group projects there's just that one person that ends up doing the bulk of the work, even when you don't ask them too?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE GOT 231 LBS OF PLUMS FROM A SINGLE TREE?

That is just... insane. It's insane. Unprecedented, especially for plums. Actually, now that I think about it, all three houses really turned out for this trip. Yes, I said three. I actually succeeded in my promise this time, though this tree that gave us EIGHT BAGS apparently took hours to clear, but I digress.

Back to what I was saying, the other two houses donated about fifty pounds of plums each, and just to put in perspective, we normally get twenty, thirty tops from individual houses. This puts this particular trip at a whopping three hundred plus pounds. If we can get these kinds of results out of plums, I'm beginning to feel really optimistic for apple season. We're already picking some early bloomers, but when the ball really starts rolling...

And to now check the map: this is dark blue, dark red, and light blue checked off. That leaves the salmon colored ones in Novato, which I'm planning on making a trip out to when I'm home—probably Sunday. I've gotten a few new offers, notably an apple tree in Petaluma and the possibility of an entire orchard of pears which is both exciting and daunting.

The black pins are houses that would like for us pickers to return as their fruit continues to ripen, so I'll have to figure out how to work that into our schedule. Perhaps I postpone the Novato trip a bit and swing by those first now that it's been a good week since we first went to the majority of the black pins.

Another exciting bit of news is that there are more people becoming interested in being Pickers! We were definitely stretched a little thin, especially with the sudden influx of Donors after my (trending) Nextdoor Neighbor post, so I made another post asking if anyone—mostly middle and high school students—would be interested in volunteering as pickers and it worked! All goes well, we'll be able to add a few more pickers to our roster in the next couple days that can maybe help out on the Novato trip.

Anyway, it's the last day of camp and I can hear screaming from the hall outside my dorm, so I'm going to go investigate. It sounds like my type of chaos.

All the love,

Carrie