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Apple picking is a bizarre imitation of hard work
Vox.com ^ | Updated Oct 1, 2021, 9:00am EDT | By Dan Greene

Posted on 10/03/2021 1:03:07 PM PDT by 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.

(Excerpt) Read more at vox.com ...


TOPICS: Agriculture; Hobbies; Outdoors; Society
KEYWORDS: agribusiness; agritainment; agritourism; appleorchards; apples; dangreene; idiotwriter; pumpkinspice; vox
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To: gnarledmaw
Then again, I once lived across the street from a person that would vacuum his shrubberies with a really loud shopvac early every Sunday morning right before he would start scrubbing his drive way (No, he wasnt a mechanic, for him that would be dirty and yucky).

Sounds like my neighbor, "Small Engine Bob"...

61 posted on 10/03/2021 4:06:20 PM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: 556x45

‘…ever-expanding autumn industrial complex’

I’m putting this way behind the military industrial complex in my list of things to worry about.


62 posted on 10/03/2021 4:15:20 PM PDT by Flick Lives (We may or may not have reached herd immunity, but we've definitely achieved herd stupidity.)
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Interesting list of apples. Never heard of several of them...

BTW how does on post an image in the reply?


63 posted on 10/03/2021 4:34:23 PM PDT by FreshPrince
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To: thecodont

“autumn industrial complex”

That is a perfect analogy to the Fall assault of pumpkin spice everything.

A local micro beef producer has joined the Autumn Industrial Complex this year by taking a couple of acres of roadside pasture and putting in gravel parking and building shops out of storage containers. Pumpkins and corn stalks everywhere with a farmer’s market of fall produce along with baked goods, hot cider and pumpkin spice everything.

Open on weekends only for the next month he’ll be making more than he does selling a cow a week.


64 posted on 10/03/2021 4:39:53 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: rlmorel

Great logo!


65 posted on 10/03/2021 4:46:07 PM PDT by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: Liaison

“I used to pick apples on weekends when I was in high school (1980s) and I got 50 cents a crate with usually 40-60 crates per tree for a big tree if I got one. Usually 20-30 boxes was the norm. “
______________________________________

While active duty at Loring AFB, Maine, we got to see every year the kids get out of school for the potato picking.

Adults thought it was great, as well as the kids. Farming communities are tight on funds and the money the kids made would go a long way in that part of the state.

I’m sure lefties/liberals would cry and moan about using the kids as labor....


66 posted on 10/03/2021 4:50:30 PM PDT by Notthereyet (We're so angry we can spit pea pellets at a tree and drill the dang tree. )
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To: kiryandil

Why, thank you!


67 posted on 10/03/2021 5:10:25 PM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists are The Droplet of Sewage in a gallon of ultra-pure clean water.)
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To: lee martell

Looks to me like an article written about ‘everything’, and all.

Over-thought, and still without a central point.


68 posted on 10/03/2021 5:10:44 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: Jamestown1630

That was the impression I was getting. The more I read, the less I knew that I knew. Then I realized I didn’t even care.


69 posted on 10/03/2021 5:18:41 PM PDT by lee martell
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To: lee martell

Time we won’t get back :-)


70 posted on 10/03/2021 5:21:30 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Testing....
https://ibb.co/7zqh6ZX


71 posted on 10/03/2021 5:42:01 PM PDT by FreshPrince
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To: ProtectOurFreedom

Thanks for posting this bit of history. Grimes Golden? Nice old varieties.


72 posted on 10/03/2021 5:45:36 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: PLMerite

Near me, adjacent to a deli that we frequent, there’s a huge lot that has always been empty of anything but grass. Whenever I saw it, or any space like it, I thought it was a horrible waste.

We happened to go to that deli a few weeks ago after being away a long time; and we saw that somebody had planted a big part of that lot with flowers and vegetables :-)


73 posted on 10/03/2021 5:49:57 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: rlmorel; lee martell

You might enjoy this guy at work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBxERHMUwrA


74 posted on 10/03/2021 5:50:47 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: PLMerite

“Someone has commented on the presence of the suburban lawn as a yearning for past agricultural practices: fields to be maintained and tilled.”

I saw a show on the lawns and gardens of old English manor houses. The line of thought on this show was having a large grass lawn and ornamental plants, hedges, follies, etc., was a demonstration of wealth by not needing to have cash crops or pasture occupying every square foot of available land.


Thanks, that was it.

Might explain why some HOAs don’t like residents growing vegetables in the front yard.


75 posted on 10/03/2021 5:52:30 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: FreshPrince
...all going to be turned into fresh cider...

Some of the cider apples are also good eating apples.

76 posted on 10/03/2021 5:54:30 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: setter
We planted 8 apple trees. Great harvest this year but cannot beat the coddling moths. Regular spraying, dormant oil in the winter, picking up all the dropped fruit and getting rid of them so not to attract bugs and insects. Any suggestions?

Wish I had some! I hate spraying.

77 posted on 10/03/2021 5:55:43 PM PDT by thecodont
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To: thecodont; lee martell

That looks too easy!


78 posted on 10/03/2021 6:00:50 PM PDT by rlmorel (Leftists are The Droplet of Sewage in a gallon of ultra-pure clean water.)
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To: Billthedrill

So ifI see black folks out picking apples can I remind them this is a white women loves fall activity?


79 posted on 10/03/2021 6:08:46 PM PDT by carcraft (Pray for our County )
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To: thecodont

The Israelis have bred four or five types of apples that will prosper in the southwestern desert heat, as long as they get water and nitrogen fertilizer, a single backyard tree can produce a LOT of apples. They do not need a freeze to blossom.


80 posted on 10/03/2021 6:14:09 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy (Jen Psaki - The Ginger Goebbels)
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