It’s Time to Pick and Pack!

Don’t be shy, put the eye to the sky!  That’s how I like to pick fresh apples at the orchard!

We are so lucky to have family in Australia who own fruit orchards.  When we arrived at the Damchev orchard we got straight to picking.

Instead of taking a car to the trees, we did it in a more fun way…  Uncle Chris drove us to the orchard in a big bin on a forklift!  It was so much more amusing than a car!

We are in a bin!

On the forklift!

We started picking.  Do you know about the eye to the sky method?

Well if not, the eye of the apple is at the bottom of the fruit.

So now that you know where the eye is, and you know that the sky is up you can understand that you turn the apple upside down and it will come off easily.  That’s what I learned when I went to an apple orchard in Canada, but in Australia, we were taught a different way…  Palm the apple.  Since apples are very delicate, if you just pull using your fingers, it will probably bruise, but if you use your fingers and palm, it will not.

It took us about 2 1/2 hours to pick 2 bins of Pink Lady apples.  We were pretty good at it for beginners!  We used special apple picking bags where you fill up your bag as much as possible, then you lean over the bin and un-hook the loops and gently lower the apples into the bin then re-hook the bag.

I am wearing my apple picking bag

Un-hooking my bag

I am emptying the apples out of my bag

Mikhaila emptying her bag

My mom is emptying out her bag

The four of us had it all figured out…  I picked the ones on the bottom, my mom and Mikhaila did the ones in the middle and my dad did the ones on the tops of the trees!  Uncle Foti was a great help and helped us pick many of them.

Here are some before and after photos:

Before we picked all of the apples

After

We were very happy because on our two boxes, Uncle Foti wrote Canada for the picker’s name.  Our apples were then put into the large cool rooms by Uncle Stan.

Next, we went to the packing shed to learn about the process of packing the pears.  Once the pears are picked, they are brought to the packing shed and washed.

Then they are placed in little cups on a conveyor belt and are weighed by a machine that will drop the pears in the right bin with the same sized pears.  I chose the medium sized pears and Teta Margret explained how to sort them.

We are all packing

Packing

Cheese… No, Pears! 🙂

The circular bins of pears

The pears in the cups

The pears are sorted into three categories:

• The Firsts

The firsts are pears that are almost perfect.  These would go to a supermarket like Loblaws in Canada.

• The Seconds

The seconds are the ones that have lines and a lot of big spots.  These ones would go to a store like Freshco in Canada.

• Juice

The pears that go for juice either have holes, sunburns or are deformed.   We did not put the pears that go to juice in a bin, instead we put them on a conveyor belt.  This part was my favourite because I enjoyed watching the pears travel down the line.

After the juice fruit is collected, it is put onto big trucks and sent to the SPC Canning factory.  Once canned, the fruit and juice is sent to the grocery store.

one of the trucks

The SPC sign

Pears in a can

Apples in a can

Our time at the orchard sadly came to an end…  But we did not leave empty handed!  Teta Margret and Uncle Foti gave us 2 big boxes of fruit!  One was full of pears and the other was full of pink lady apples.  They were delicious and we ate them everyday!

Now I have a better understanding of how much labour goes into the fruit that we buy at the grocery store.  This process is a lot of work and we will no longer take it for granted.

Our time at the Damchev orchard reminded me of going to apple orchards in Canada with our school before Thanksgiving.  This time was even better because we were with our family.  I also found out that I can eat at least 4 apples in less than an hour!