Apple Harvest 2008

We started picking our apples yesterday, and between yesterday and today we have harvested about 2000 kgs of apples. Apple trees are prone to biannual bearing, meaning one year they tend to produce a lot of fruit and the following year less. With our plantation this will be a year with less fruit so we should finish the picking quite soon.

So what does the harvesting process involve?

First we hand pick a few apples in boxes for use as eating and cooking apples in the hotel.

Then we gently hit the trees with a stick so that the apples fall to the floor.

After that we pick the apples from the ground, separating the good apples from the bad ones putting the good apples in the sacks, (not the bad ones of course.)

Then comes the hard part; humping the sacks to the nearest farm track.

The tractor then takes the sacks of apples from the farm to a central point, normally the hotel car park.

Then Antonio comes to collect the apples and takes them away to be transformed into the lovely apple juice we serve in the hotel.