Picken on the halves.......

We were at the land a year ago last month and on our way down to spend the weekend with Gene and George before coming back to Florida, we saw an apple orchard sign, pointing down this little country road. I had never seen apples growing on a tree before. Hey, I've lived in Florida all my life and we only have oranges, grapefruit and other citrus in hot Florida. We came upon this little produce stand, selling apples and other end of the summer produce. The owner was like most of the Alabamian's we have come across....our new best friend. After talking for several minutes and eating some of his homemade ice cream that he makes from the fruits that he grows, I asked him if there was some way we could pick a basket of apples ourselves, since I had never seen apples on a tree. He laughed and pointed us to this little apple orchard a hop, skip and a jump down the road. We had the best time picking, and tasting the apples. We picked a box full. After thanking the man and finding out that in the spring, he has blackberries, blueberries and peaches in his orchards, we headed to Gene and George's. When we got back to Florida, I made apple sauce out of half of the apples and it was the best apple sauce we have ever eaten.

This last Spring we were headed home from the land and saw the sign for "Peaches" at the little produce stand. This time the wife was running the stand. We told her about our apple experience and what fun we had. She asked us if we wanted to "pick on the halves"? Chuck and I looked at each other and both thought..." must be another Alabamian thing"...lol. Come to find out, if we picked a quart of blackberries for ourselves and then picked a quart for the produce stand to sell, we got our quart free. That day we picked four quarts of blackberries and two quarts of blueberries and came home with three quarts of free berries. We are hoping when we move to the land, that we can " pick on the halves "every season. Yes, we have all the blackberries we can eat, growing on the land but these at the produce stand are hybrids and are much better for cobblers since they don't have as many seeds. The wild berries, I will use in jellies, jams and sauces. So, our new Alabama experience was " picken on the halves".