We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
them and deliver them lol lol ..
Now i live 10 mi from town and am not about to deliver to anyone!!
...Looks like our live stock will be eating a lot of fruit for a while
and the same with lots of garden veggies ...And yes i have contacted the
shelters and they will not come and get it eiher . What a waste

On Sep 10, 4:55 pm, ({BEV}) wrote:
> We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
> have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
> taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
> them and deliver them lol lol ..
> Now i live 10 mi from town and am not about to deliver to anyone!!
> ..Looks like our live stock will be eating a lot of fruit for a while
> and the same with lots of garden veggies ...And yes i have contacted the
> shelters and they will not come and get it eiher . What a waste


Presumptive ingrates. Feed it to the stock, or let the rest fall and
rake it up for the compost heap. (Tell the ones who want delivery
what your charges are.)

Years ago my "compost" pile was just a ditch dug at the far end of the
property. Wild animals would forage there, and hence not need to come
near the house and the garden.

"{BEV}" > wrote in message
...
> We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
> have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
> taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
> them and deliver them lol lol ..
> Now i live 10 mi from town and am not about to deliver to anyone!!
> ..Looks like our live stock will be eating a lot of fruit for a while
> and the same with lots of garden veggies ...And yes i have contacted the
> shelters and they will not come and get it eiher . What a waste
>

You might want to contact the local Americorps and see if anyone is
looking for a project and wants to start up a branch of the following:

http://www.growing-gardens.org/portl...ee-project.php

In the meantime I would suggest you try posting in the -free- section of
craigslist.org I would bet your Orchard will be stripped of all fruit in a
few days.

This summer I've put up quite a lot of fruit that came from people posting
free fruit in craigslist.

There are a couple of suggestions I would make, however:

1) You can't pick most fruit trees without both a fruit picker and an
orchard ladder. You have to assume that someone that shows up in a
truck with a fruit picker and orchard ladder wanting to pick free fruit
knows
what they are doing. But I've been told before at a few sites that
they don't allow ladders for liability. I've just told them sorry, if you
don't allow ladders your going to have to pay someone to pick your
trees.

2) hobby canners often have day jobs. If your 10 miles out from the
city with a freeway right to your door, no problem. If your 10 miles on
2 lane roads, folks can't get home from work and out to your place
with enough daylight left to make it worth picking. So if your adverse
to allowing them to come out on Saturday and Sunday, they won't come.

As a follow up to this, there are a few nutty people believe it or not who
will happily come out at 1 am at night to pick free fruit. If you post your
advertisement at 11:50pm at night you will see these people. Make sure
to say in the advert that people aren't allowed between sundown and
sunrise.

3) When you make your post in craigslist, you have to specify exactly
the fruit. "Apples" isn't good enough. What kind of apples? I'm not going
to come pick Macintosh apples from your orchard because I hate them.
Yellow Transparent is a different story, naturally. You also
need to post a phone number to a cell phone you carry. If I'm going to
come out to your place to pick for a couple of hours, I am going to want
to call you before I leave home to make sure that your there, and that
the trees are loaded and ready to pick. If I call you and get an answering
machine I'm not going to come, and that might be the only time during the
day that I can come out.

4) Don't expect people to clean up dropped fruit. I had one lady do this
to me one time. I came out to pick Dolgo crabapples from her tree. She
was wanting people to pick them since they were dropping all over her
garden and making a mess. The usual way you pick these is to shake the
tree limbs and they come raining down. Then you crawl around picking
them up and tossing them into your bucket or whatever. When I got done
she started complaining that "well everyone else that came out here has
cleaned up" In other words she wanted every last crabapple picked up,
including the ones that had dropped days before I got there and were
rotten. The usual deal on these free fruit things is the people come pick
the fruit and saves you the trouble of scraping it up from the ground to
keep the rats away, in exchange they get free fruit. It is not people come
and work for you for a couple hours and are paid in fruit that mostly
wouldn't be saleable.

5) Don't ignore your trees. This is my biggest peeve. Usually I can tell
when people have done that because they can't seem to resist spilling their
guts in a free fruit advertisement. "Organic, no-pesticide fruit"
translates
into "I was too cheap to spend money on dormant spray and my apples
are loaded with worms" or another favorite is "The tree is so loaded with
fruit it's broken a few limbs" translates into "I was too cheap to hire a
tree pruner" I had one guy that when I showed up to pick plums from
his tree he handed me a tree pruner and allowed as how it would be
a lot easier for me to just cut off the tree limbs with the plums on them.
In other words, prune my tree for me in exchange for fruit. A variation
on these scams are the people who tell you you can pick up all the windfalls
for free, but they charge money for anything picked from the tree.

Good luck!
Ted

Check for a local food bank. Here in Oregon we have Gleeners who will go
out and pick anything they can get their hands on. 1 in 4 families in my
area rely on the food bank for part of their needs, so fresh fruit,
veggies, etc are welcome.

jane in Eugene Oregon

"{BEV}" > wrote in message
...
> We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
> have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
> taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
> them and deliver them lol lol ..
> Now i live 10 mi from town and am not about to deliver to anyone!!
> ..Looks like our live stock will be eating a lot of fruit for a while
> and the same with lots of garden veggies ...And yes i have contacted the
> shelters and they will not come and get it eiher . What a waste
>

> "{BEV}" > wrote in message
> ...
> > We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
> > have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
> > taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
> > them and deliver them lol lol ..
> > Now i live 10 mi from town and am not about to deliver to anyone!!
> > ..Looks like our live stock will be eating a lot of fruit for a while
> > and the same with lots of garden veggies ...And yes i have contacted the
> > shelters and they will not come and get it eiher . What a waste
> >
>
>

What a waste indeed. Try a small add in a local paper to sell them for a
reasonably inexpensive price. Some who would not take advantage of
something Free (not me) would pay for a bargain.

JonquilJan

Learn something new every day
As long as you are learning, you are living
When you stop learning, you start dying

On Tue, 14 Oct 2008 17:32:23 -0400, "JonquilJan" >
wrote:

>
>
>> "{BEV}" > wrote in message
>> ...
>> > We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
>> > have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
>> > taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
>> > them and deliver them lol lol ..
>> > Now i live 10 mi from town and am not about to deliver to anyone!!
>> > ..Looks like our live stock will be eating a lot of fruit for a while
>> > and the same with lots of garden veggies ...And yes i have contacted the
>> > shelters and they will not come and get it eiher . What a waste

If you're within 75 miles of Frederick, MD, I'll see you this weekend
with buckets and bags. Not kidding.


snow

So, where are you located? My quince tree died this year and I can't
find any in my area (Eastern Massachusetts). Maybe someone else on
this group is near you and would want your fruit.

Dave


> >> > We have a small Orchard with pears apples , quince and damson plums ..i
> >> > have tried to get ppl to come take what they want and not one person has
> >> > taken anything . I have had some call and ask if i would pick some for
> >> > them and deliver them lol lol ..

PS: Maybe we need to come up with a letter we can all sign on on as a
group for rfp.

B/