Apple picking is a bizarre imitation of hard work

Vox.com ^ | Updated Oct 1, 2021, 9:00am EDT | By Dan Greene

[thecodont]

One afternoon a few Octobers ago, I sat with a friend from Spain at a picnic table in an idyllic orchard 50 miles northwest of New York City.

As our significant others scoured the farm’s various other goods (jams, butters, donuts), the two of us admired the vast green-and-red foliage blanketing the hills in the distance. Beside us were net bags filled with the dozens of apples we had collected by hand from the property’s dozens of rows of trees — a ritual and scene familiar to many Americans. My friend looked at the bags and gestured toward the sprawl of plants behind him. As enjoyable as the day had been, he found the activity a little weird. “In Spain, we have a lot of fruit,” he said of Europe’s top produce exporter. “But we don’t have anything like this.”

Through fresh eyes, the whole thing indeed seemed strange. Quality apples are generally easily available at grocery stores, and it’s not as though such heavily romanticized traditions are built around gathering other foods. (To wit, a 2015 New Yorker cartoon depicted a family picking apples with the caption: “Maybe next time we can go mine our own salt.”)

Yet apple picking has become an essential, Instagram-friendly element of America’s ever-expanding autumn industrial complex, alongside cable-knit sweaters and pumpkin-spice-everything. It’s a central seasonal activity among many American farms’ so-called “agritourism” or “agritainment” offerings, including hayrides, corn mazes, and petting zoos; between 2012 and 2017, the total US agritourism industry grew 35 percent to nearly $950 million a year.

[Liaison]

The author lost me as to his premise when he use the SPLC as a source to say that the foreign workers on farms was modern slavery when the SPLC would have all Americans in a USSR/CCP style serfdom with their beliefs of equality and social utopia.

[Chad C. Mulligan]

SPEAKING as one who HAS picked apples all day as a teenager I can only say BUWAA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA.

This was long enough ago that I was paid a whole $2.00, too. My father was a stingy Scot.

[heavy metal]

maybe they should try picking oranges for a comparison... 😎...

[rlmorel]

"...America’s ever-expanding autumn industrial complex..."

Good God. I think this person really is serious. When I read this passage, I had to double back and re-read, thinking that it was going to be a funny piece, but...he is apparently dead serious.

For anyone who has gone apple picking (or strawberry picking, etc.) it isn't about imitating work. It is about doing something with other people (usually small kids) being outdoors, and...getting the produce you want.

With one lone exception, I don't engage in this kind of thing because my time is valuable to me and I am not using the exercise to entertain kids. I haven't gone apple picking in decades.

But I do fish and I have manually dug for clams, because they offer me something I cannot buy in a store. In the case of fish, being on the ocean, being with buddies, and that taste that only freshly caught Cod can provide. And drinking beer. In the case of clamming, deciding which clams you keep, and eating them with the knowledge that you know where they came from and that you did it yourself, with an aching back to prove it. And drinking beer. (I created this logo as a joke some years ago and made t-shirs for my buddy and others of us who used to clam when we were all staying up in Maine...

Reading this article (I actually did read it) all I could think of was...this guy needs to get get outside, get laid, get drunk, put down his phone, get off the computer, and probably all of them.

How pathetic it was to read.

[Sapwolf]

Can’t this weirdo’s ...state ...secede already?

[rlmorel]

It reminds me of the famous quote from H.L. Mencken, which I have so often modified just a little to read:

"Leftism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

[rlmorel]

This is the kind of dope who probably thinks steaks are raised on sterile farms inside their own little styrofoam tray.

And that an ear of corn comes from “the store”.

[FreshPrince]

Apple picking..waddya know...I sarted picking my orchard yeaterday. Golf ball sized tremletts bitter and porters perfection...all hanging in clumps so you have to be carefull when you pick one a bunch dont hit the ground..took 8 hrs to pick 300 lbs.

On the other hand, this mystery variety propagated from a mystry tree on the farm was picked this morning.. huge apples. 300 lbs picked in an hour....got some smokehouse and black amish to pick as well...all going to be turned into fresh cider...

[lee martell]

That’s a good logo. Good simple design, and use of three colors. Not overly busy. Lot’s of humorous references from somebody who has done it.

[Candor7]

One of my favorite activities.

But if you have to do it for a living like I have done, its damned hard work.

I have to laugh how leftists have to revise the way things are to enjoy ordinary activities. I respect apple orchard worles. These leftists look down on them.

[rlmorel]

LOL, the only thing missing from that version was the drop of bright red blood dripping from the finger!

Gotta include that!

[C210N]

“Maybe next time we can go mine our own salt.”

[lee martell]

lol!
Sounds like that 2007 movie with Daniel Day Lewis called:
“There Will Be Blood!”.

[rlmorel]

And you know this because you have done it...there is a difference when you pick them yourself and eat it yourself.

When you buy them from a store, well, okay. They do often taste fine.

But when you get them yourself, trudging up to mid-calf in gooey, stinking black tidal mud which you also have smeared on yourself from swatting at the mosquitoes, black flies, and green heads, and the tingling danger sign when you try to grab a clam and pull it up, that burning tingling that tells you that your finger now has a good gash in it. You pull your finger out, and the bright red blood mixes with that nasty black gooey mud...

Plus, all that bending over, if you don’t have a back that is 100% in good operating condition, you feel it.

But when you rinse them off, and they have no grit, you steam them with some bay leaf, peppercorns, and chorizo, wow...are those things great.

You appreciate them far more than you would if you paid for crappy gritty ones from the store.

The lesson there applies to a lot of things in life. Working for things makes you appreciate them, conserve them, and treat them with far more respect than you would if someone gave them to you.

[lucky american]

Believe it or not, my husband picks apples every fall for a local farm. He’s 74 years old. He picks what they call Ivys. The best of the best which get sold at the college and at the farm stand for top dollar. He’s got a fast but gentle hand which keeps apples from bruising and picks them properly preserving next year’s apple bud. He picks about 4,000 bushels a season and they pay him well. Keeps him busy, strong and healthy. He’s done this most of his life even when he held a full time job. The farm hires him back every year and I assume one day they will call and tell me he died doing what he loves.

[shotgun]

Growing is the easy part. Trimming definitely sucks. A time consuming, sticky mess.

[lee martell]

What a description! I’m right there, wearin my size 14 boots and swattin those flies.

[rlmorel]

I actually liked that movie...it was...interesting!

But I can't think of that movie now without thinking of this kids poster (what movie posters would look like for kids) that made me laugh:

Another one was:

[Karliner]

I guess he doesn’t know what having callouses on his hands mean...except maybe...well, nevermind.

[Brian Griffin]

My aunt Esther had an apple tree, a pear tree, a quince tree and a mulberry tree.

The apples on the apple tree were wormy and never suitable for eating. To produce edible fruit, the tree would have to have been sprayed. The other trees produced edible fruit.

One uncle had pretty his whole city lot excluding the house and walkways covered with food-growing plants. My aunt Bertha spent a lot of time canning in late summer.