Harvest!

Some photos from our recent harvest.  As mentioned in our Crossroads post we had issues with disease due to our machinery breakdowns in Spring, and being overextended.  As a result most of our apples will be sold for juice.  This is disappointing, but all part of the learning process.

A pretty scene, but those black spots mean these are juice apples...

And make no mistake, the harvest was a big learning process.  How to manage pickers, the logistics of bins and transport, salaries, plus the long days just making sure it all ticked along smoothly when the weather was good.  Cor helped as much as she could with Julian in tow, but I was lucky to have the help of Shane, a friend who is a jack of all trades.  Together we ran the picking crew, keeping the bins up to them with the tractors, plus keeping spirits and tempo high.

So we still have some more bins to pick, but at last count we picked 405 bins, which isn’t bad considering it was our first true season.  For those who don’t know, a bin holds about 400kg of apples, and it can be a daunting task to fill one when you first start.  However when you get going they can fill pretty quickly.

There have been a few other goings on during this time.  I did my forklift licence, we killed a few pigs, and we have moved into the farm house.  But more photos to come on those things shortly, for now it’s all about the apples.

Running the bins out

...picking...

..and those bins seem mighty big.

An unusual apple variety, some sort of weird looking Asian hybrid.

A bin full of delicious!

The bins start to come in

Shane logging bins

The bins pile up

  

After the pickers are gone, there's still lots to do...

...well into the night.

The moment our first load of bins left Our Mates' Farm

Two cider apples from our new grafts, a exciting part of our future plans.