Perhaps "foraging" is a better phrase for me to use to tell you about my guerilla fruit salvaging tactics. As you will know I'm someone who brakes for heirloom fruit trees, and hates wasting any surplus homegrown fruit or veggies.
I paused on New Year's Day when I noticed a rather large roadside plum tree not far from Struan Farm dripping with ripe fruit. Plums were dropping to the ground under the tree and being ravaged by the birds. (I'd been dropping John off down the road with equipment and sprayer to work on some noxious roadside weeds that have been bugging him for years and getting bigger and bigger. Yep, this is the sort of thing we do.)
It didn't take me long to go home to grab some containers and go back to that plum tree to start picking. Of course for the Piopio Community Fruit & Veg Stand.
Cows in the paddock next door watched me with interest. They were glad someone was going to put the fruit to use and not leave it to those squawky mynas. At one point a native tui came to the tree to serenade my work. We had a good conversation after her song.
I used to be quite hesitant about doing this sort of thing, but after seeing how much beautiful fruit gets wasted I have become much less so. I've put the word out that if someone in the area has fruit that they can't or won't pick, but happy to donate, to contact me and we'll sort something out. I've got a fruit picker and I'm not afraid to use it!
Some of the stones from rotting plums from this tree have gone into the fridge in the garage with a bit of compost to see if I can get them to sprout. It's a much earlier, sweeter plum than those in our orchard, from an old house site, so would be good to grow.
Twelve small buckets of fruit were dropped off at the Stand and hopefully enjoyed by the community.
A minor good deed to start off the New Year.
And p.s. I came across another tree laden with ripe plums in Piopio yesterday, basically this same sort of situation: good fruit going to waste. I was able to pick three boxes of fruit for the stand and hope to get back to do more (part of the tree hangs over a fence that is accessible, but I left a note for the property owner to see if they'll let me come over to pick more from inside their yard).
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