Fruit and hiking

 

I love fresh fruit. I buy grapes when they drop below $1.50 a pound. Then the stores are just trying to cut their losses. Sometimes I get great grapes sometimes we lose some.

I like my apples hard and crisp. I also like salt on them every once in awhile, especially if the apple is green or tart. I guess my favorite apple is the Delicious (red or green). When I was little I didn’t know one apple from another and preferred any kind, GREEN. I loved what mama called cooking apples. They were hard and cracked when I bit into them.

We still have orchards here in NC mountains that have ‘pick you own’ orchards. We have only done that once or twice. We have picked citrus in Florida, but the ‘U-Pick’ groves are getting scarce, the owners are leery of law suits. That is a shame.

Hunsader’s Farms, near Bradenton, Florida still have u-pick fields for strawberries, tomatoes and Bell peppers. The best deal we ever got and the best oranges were there. WE picked several bushels for $1 a bushel. You can pick a bushel in a couple minutes.

I love grapefruit; Southern Texas and Florida have the Best Ruby reds. Now I noticed on this medicine I just started that I cannot have Grapefruit nor the juice. Bummer.

I think fruit is important. Several times when we were hiking, we bought an extra bag of apples and hung them so hikers could reach them; an apple is a pleasant treat as you walk thru the woods.

True story: Damascus, VA. The AT goes right thru town. It is a friendly trail town and they have Trail Days every year. Hikers from the past come back to celebrate and talk to the current year’s crop of hiker who have made it this far. They have many vendors and lectures, and display the latest in hiking gear. We attended a lecture by what I call a tree hugger (I love our environment, and try not to do too much damage to it.). This lady had a couple points to make. “NEVER, NEVER throw an apple core down in the woods. Animals will eat it and get used to the free food and forget how to forage for it.” I casually asked my neighbor, what about all those apple trees we pass hiking, shouldn’t we destroy those?”

“The lady also thought it a good idea to take a short piece of 4” PVC pipe with one end having a cap on it. You should ‘poop’ in it and carry it out to a proper disposal point.”

I got the idea she didn’t think Bears actually did ‘poop’ in the woods. Some folks are extreme to the ridiculous.

Thanks for reading this stuff.

Nite Shipslog

PS:

'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world;  it can just barely kill you.' 
- Attributed to Max Stanley (Northrop test pilot) -