Harvest 2008

And while I'm updating this blog thing, I must put down my thoughts about harvest 2008. Batlow was hit with a hailstorm just after christmas 2007. We had just driven out of the driveway on our way to visit Craig and Donna. 10 minutes later the storm hit (we didn't get any rain on our drive, we must have been in front of it) and wiped out the apple harvest in Batlow. The district was about 8 weeks away from picking. The storm was 3 kms wide and was vicious. Anne and Noel were still at the farm and helped get all the machinery under cover - thank goodness. A hailstorm is really quite disturbing. The Batlow Fruit Cooperative Ltd usually packs something around 180,000 bins of fruit a year. This year it packed 10,000. So the district, which is still recovering from an ongoing drought, now has to deal with the effects of a hail storm. Heart breaking.

We usually pick around 30 bins in our small orchard. This year we picked 9. I still sold bags of fruit at work to my colleagues, and they still loved them and wanted more. But very damaged fruit.

Here's some photos of the harvest (we picked the week after Easter - first week in April just for the record). Look how tall Jack is!




love
M