# Wasted fruit



## HoppeEL4 (Dec 29, 2010)

I have been watching so many people with apple and pear tree's in their yards and as the fruit ripened, I expected to see them out there picking it. No, almost all these people let the fruit drop to the ground and rot. Down the road from us a house has two nice dwarf variety tree's, easy pickings and healthy. They have red delicious loaded to the gills, and it is dropping senselessly to the ground, as well as their golden delicious. 

As preppers, does it drive you as crazy as it does me to see this? They had a garden the year before and no one was out there harvesting, I watched as pumpkins and other produce rotted. These people are not the only ones, but they are my prime example.

First year we moved here there was a grapevine but it was on a horrendously large and dangerous arbor that had to be torn down, so entwined was the vine, it had to be cut down. So it took two years, this year it produced grapes. I was not only so excited to see them newly forming, but when they started turning red. I harvested those today, soaked them in the sink, gleaned them off the stems and cooked them down, and using my mothers sieve and pestle, ground the heck out of the pulp saving it all for grape jelly. Wound up with about 3 gallons.

The prospect of finding free fruit or produce others don't want, or overlook and making something really great, as well as nutritious out of it really excites me. I will admit, other than my 73 year old mother, I am the only one who does get excited over gleaned stuff from the wild or abandoned (I guess I know where I get this from!!LOL). My husband is not only non-interested, he avoids eye contact when I talk of him going with me to find stuff. Though today he did hold up the heavy collapsed vines (storm blew the unstable trellis over) up so I could get all the grapes, but otherwise, he does all he can to not do this with me. 

I used to have a teen son who was more than willing, but now he is 20 and this is not cool (to go berry picking in the mountains with his mother). Have a teenage daughter, but she is her dads kid and avoids me too when she hears me talking about picking berries. The oldest no longer lives nearby, but is finally (at 30) starting to see the benefit of free berries and all.

I need to find a local foraging buddy, it tires my mother out, although she does like it, but I am one of those who will go to lengths she no longer can for free stuff, so I need someone my own equal.

I suppose I need to find someone at church, maybe start a group and make friends with people who have tree's and don't want the fruit (offer an exchange of their fruit for some finished product later, take down names and come back with jams and jellies).

Again, is it a prepper thing to see fruit dropping to the ground and have it drive you crazy? It does me.


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## Wellrounded (Sep 25, 2011)

We pick what ever we can get when we are out and about, I started a diary a few years ago of what is ripe when and where.....
I've had times though when I haven't been well enough to pick, nothing as sad as seeing all that work go to waste. One year it was our entire corn crop, . 
We are in the process of establishing a pig orchard, we will pick what we want and let the rest fall for the pigs to forage, that might drive you a little crazy . Apples are just so easy here and turn into such good bacon......


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## HoppeEL4 (Dec 29, 2010)

Oh I have NO problem letting pigs have apples to make better bacon later. We're in the Pacific Northwest's apple territory, and there are so many old farms apples trees around, however they tend to be overgrown, have apple scab or worms. All three make them unappealing or inedible, it is the apples from healthy young tree's going to waste (when the apples are at their best) that really bothers me.

Corn, I would love to be able to grow corn, but we are just too far north and too high an elevation for sweet corn, our summer nights get chilly, and seems the corn just does not like it right where we are. Funny, just a mile down the road, the elevation drops just enough that someone down there has a huge crop of corn on their property every summer, come up one mile to us, and it will not grown and ripen. Tomatoes don't as well.


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## libprepper (Aug 8, 2013)

No it doesn't bother me. I see corn grown for nothing more that corn mazes. Blackberry bushes all over never picked. And like you lots of folks who let their trees go. At least if things get bad they did learn to plant a garden even if they didn't harvest it or use the fruit. My guess is SHTF and that sort of thing wouldn't happen. Before we had animals finding something to do will overripe or very marginal veggies was a problem, pretty much could only compost it, now I get pretty brown eggs and happy feathered girls.


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## GrinnanBarrett (Aug 31, 2012)

My daughter runs a community garden in Garland, TX area. She and her neighbors have a system where they eat what they want and store what they want and the rest goes to the local food pantry to feed the needy. We participate in a similar garden in our area where half goes to the local food pantry and the rest is shared with our church. It kills me when you say Blackberries. We love blackberries and are planting vines along our fence surrounding our enclosed raised garden in our yard. 

We had to put up a fence and top over the ten by twenty foot garden to keep out the small critters that were taking everything before we could harvest it. We used sections of old dog runs with a see through netting on top to allow plenty of sun in. GB


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## HoppeEL4 (Dec 29, 2010)

GrinnanBarrett, blackberries up here are a nuisance, a weed, they grow everywhere (no need to plant them). However, I do pick them and make jam, and then eradicate the dang things that pop up unwanted. I always laugh at people I see I the store contemplating buying blackberries, I know they did not grow up here, locals will not pay anything for blackberries, let alone at $4.99 a pint!!LOL

I like the community garden thing, using some to local food bank, it's a good idea to be sure nothing gets wasted.


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## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

Just today I saw a loaded apple tree with sooooo many apples lying on the ground, rotting. I was shocked. That would be such a blessing for us. I hope they consider letting some of their neighbors pick what's left (the tree is on a small urban plot of a very small town, not remotely affluent). It's certainly their own business what they do with their bounty. But yeah, it does make me sad to see it go to waste. I'll bet there's at least one neighbor who'd know what to do with those apples...


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## kappydell (Nov 27, 2011)

you might try walking up and asking if you can have them...I will never forget the incredulity of the city employees when I asked for permission to 'glean' the fruit from the apple trees in the park for dried apples & applesauce (they were about 50% wormy, not sprayed at all). They just could not believe anybody would want to do that, but I did get permission! Be sure to return with thank you gifts of some of the processed fruit (can of sauce, dried apples, or whatever) to say thank you. That gets you more likely to be notified the next year when they ripen.


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## HoppeEL4 (Dec 29, 2010)

Oh yes kappydell, that would do it.

Goshengirl, I know, I get all twitchy like a meth addict when I see fruit dropping to the ground. If it's abandoned land, I will assuredly make my way down and pick it.


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## boomer (Jul 13, 2011)

Many people are either too old, too ill/injured or too busy to harvest and process the fruit or tend the garden. My Mother gives most of the fruit she grows that she cannot reach from the ground away to people who are careful to not break the trees. She even provides the ladder for those who ask.

A friend of ours kept gardens in two of her neighbors back yards this summer, both of whom have become to aged to do it themselves. She made arrangements early in the spring so she could prune, have the cultivating done. Both owners were happy to have someone using the produce and keeping the yards. Both declined a share of the produce as they have mostly delivered ready to eat food (home care for the elderly).


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

For me it is not a prepper thing.
I have bin gathering tame & wild fruit from my grade school years until now.
I cut the top out of a gallon milk jug, but left the handle so I could loop it though my belt to hold the jug. That way I could pick with both hands.
Blueberry,black & dew berry, Indian plums, wild cherry, muscadines from the wild. Even did the crabapples when there was a good crop.
I do not understand wasting food with so many hunger children in the world. Everyone can get someone to pick & process fruit on a 50-50 or even 75-25 deal is better then rotting fruit.
I am all for a pig & chickens to clean up the damage, so there is no waste.
Farm & ranch people grow up knowing this, some city people do too.
But to many believe it just appears on the shelf in the store.
When you have blood on your hands from what will be tonights dinner or a red rash from to much fruit acid, you look at the world differently.


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## goshengirl (Dec 18, 2010)

Thanks for the jug idea - I'm going to use that! :2thumb:

And I agree, it's not a prepping thing, it's about not wasting.


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