August 5, 2021
Welcome to the second day of picking! Today was two hundred fifty-eight pounds of a whole lot of apples; give or take thirty pounds of asian pears, or as one of my friends called them, pear-apples. For anyone curious, that is incorrect, they are asian pears. I don't know what she was talking about ;).
We had a lot of fun picking today! I wore proper shoes this time that I wasn't too afraid to get dirty, which is ironic because this time they didn't at all. We figured out out a good system of how to pick the higher-up apples as well. Someone would go up a ladder and stay there, and then toss the apples down to someone waiting at the bottom to place in the boxes/bags. We had the occasional fumble, and a couple complaints about apples hitting someone in the head, but it overall worked well.
The first two houses were revisits–returning for the fruits that weren't ripe a week ago–but the third house was new. She had the most adorable dog; a golden retriever named Luna who hung out with us while we were working her way through her apple orchard of five trees. We got sidetracked a lot petting her.
Actually, in the driveway of the house we nearly ran headlong into a stag. It was in the driveway near the carpark overhand thing, and we didn't see it until we were halfway up the driveway. There was some... mutual panic. I stepped to the side and my friends literally ran away, which wasn't even the slightest bit helpful, and the stag was running around in circles trying to find a way out that wouldn't take him by us. He eventually figured it out, and ended up staring at us for a little bit from across the street. Maybe he was wondering what we were doing there.
There was a lot of apples at that house that weren't completely ready yet, so I think we'll definitely be returning in a week or so, maybe with a bit more manpower!
The reason I'm updating a day late is because we donated our pickings this morning–the times are 8AM-3PM for donations–literally at opening time. I wanted to know the weight of our donations down before I posted so I can have them in the same post, but depending on when we actually have picking days, that may require a lot of late updates because the Distribution center isn't open on Saturdays or Sundays. So from now on I'm just going to update along the way and record the pounds of the post in the next one.
Anyway, 258 pounds of fruit is just insane to me. I can't believe this has gotten so much attention, and I just want to thank every donor who has allowed us into their backyards to pick their extra fruit. It's such a special feeling to think that you're doing something that can make a difference, so I appreciate every single person who has enabled us to help someone in need. And we've just had a lot of fun hanging out along the way, which is always a plus.
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