Just last weekend we enjoyed an evening of food and fellowship with the same friends who joined us for backyard vacation bible school. At one point the topic of discussion turned to the giant apricot tree in our backyard. We don’t know much about apricots, and really didn’t know when they would be ripe, best time to pick them, etc and were asking for any information that anyone might know. Our friend Colin says to us, “When they go, they will go fast.”
And go fast they did.
In less than a week they went from mostly green with just pockets of orange to falling off the tree because they were so heavy with juice. I even got hit with one when I was innocently sitting in the shade reading a book!
There seems to be a camp that says risk losing a few to let them get that ripe on the tree and another camp that says, pick them when they start turning and let them ripen inside to avoid heavy losses to birds and gravity.
Our apricot inexperience is going to put us somewhere in the middle this year. We need the ladder to reach the lowest branches, but even Tim’s reach can’t quite get to the highest concentration, up another 5 feet.
Aidan, the monkey, can get to quite a few from the roof of the shed, although looking at this picture I swear I told him to put on his tennis shoes before climbing the tree. I suppose with this kid I should be glad he is wearing shoes at all…
Um, no baby.
So far we have picked 2-3 ice cream pails of good apricots and lost that many as squashed juice bombs.
We haven’t even made a dent in the total so that will be our project for the rest of the weekend!
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