Forbidden Fruit
Some of the best fruit I've ever eaten has
been stolen. One fall, I housesat for a friend whose land butted
up against an abandoned apple orchard currently being turned into
subdivisions. Those apples were some of the sweetest, tangiest
fruits I've ever tasted --- I don't even know what variety they were,
but I gathered huge bags full to turn into applesauce.
After we moved into town from our farm when I was in fourth grade, my
mother used to take us out hunting abandoned fruit on quiet side
streets and alleys. She scouted carefully and found several trees
whose fruit was left to rot on the ground, yellow jackets buzzing
ominously between. Sometimes she rang the door bell and asked for
permission. Sometimes we scurried around and filled plastic
grocery bags surreptitiously when no one was home. This is how we
got our June Apples (Early Transparents) --- the type of apple you
might envision the gods eating on Mt. Olympus.
Yesterday, I collected some pears --- not quite stealing since the
property owner's niece had said I could. I didn't plan it ---
just went walking on the private park to enjoy the autumn colors, then
stumbled upon fruit rotting on the ground. Luckily, my backpack
was full of old grocery bags, so I filled them to the brim, stopping
only when my backpack refused to zip closed. Now what will I do
with a couple of gallons of delicious, but a bit gritty, country pears?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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