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| No Bees, no fruit |
While the big commercial crop besides wine grapes is cherries, Mark's Raanen Estate orchard produces pit fruit including apricots, peaches, nectarines, and plums. The crew has arrived and we've been working the orchard the last 5 days. Mark's daughter Susi, husband Mike, with our child labor, Katy and James have joined us and we are working against the clock to get the apricot harvest in. 3 varieties of cots-Early Red, Sundrop, and Vulcan. Ripening from too green to ready to pick can occur over just a few hours. The weather here is very dry and, hot during the day and can cool off at night with strong winds. No Japan Current to moderate temps and the south wind is on a direct reach from Antarctica. Prior to picking we've been weeding new trees, fertilizing, and assembling boxes in the packing shed. Harvest has been full on the last two days and we've hand picked, sorted and packed by size 1.5 tons of fruit. It gets moved into the chiller after packing and today we moved all the boxes on to pallets, shrink wrapped them and took them to the freight shed in Cromwell where they get trucked to Picton, ferried to the North Island and will be sold at the Hamilton farmer's market next Saturday. In a month, Peaches come on and the cycle starts over. Just finishing a Mac's Hop Rocker Pilsener and Bonnie, James, Katy and I are headed down to Lake Dunstan for a dip.
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| Happy Pickers |
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| Sorting and Packing |
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| Offloading for shipment to the north island |
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| A well earned night on the town |
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| Condon crew extraordinaire |
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