So I was chatting with a friend and they mentioned someone they knew was going Apple Picking this weekend. I still think this is the dumbest fucking waste of time. Do not get me wrong, I love being outside and nature type things. Well besides bugs that jump/fly. Jump flying is awful, it’s like a new type of hybrid bug that basically glides through the air and lands on things blindly. Mostly me. They land on mostly me. They are erratic and I foresee my death as: heart-attack from a jump/fly bug.
I grew up in Florida and no one paid the big Orange Grove owners money to come pick their oranges. In fact, it was the complete opposite, the orange grove owners hired basically illegal immigrants for lunch money, to pick their oranges for them so they could sell them to the Donald Duck factory that makes orange juice and stinks up Lake Wales and all of 27? (if you’re from Florida you know what I’m speaking of) No one wanted the job of picking oranges. In fact, kids at school would call other kids an “orange picker,” as a mean name. I’d drive by the groves with my parents and see all the working men on ladders picking the oranges. There would be squishy soggy ones one the ground and when it would get really hot they would start to smell a bit funky. But, my point is, we didn’t all get our matching booty shorts and tanks on, and go “in season” asking if we could borrow their ladders and start picking. So when I moved here, I was all. WTF…..
Welcome to New Jersey, the Garden State. Here Apple Orchards charge families in matching flannels pretending to be happy $7 a person. Oh, and then $15 extra dollars for a bag to hold the apples you picked. For a family of 5 that’s $50 dollars! Basically they all go for the 3 good pictures that they can post on IG. These pictures are able to captured in between their kids arguing and their parents complaining about how crowded and expensive everything is. There are tons of bees that are soooo confused and just looking to sting someone so they can kill themselves. They don’t know if it’s cold or hot or what’s the hell is going on. None of us do really. During the day it’s in the 70’s and at night in the 50’s. Next are the flies and then the fruit flies and now the dreaded spotted lantern flies. (If you’ve read my previous post you know I run rallies on killing lantern flies daily) There is only one thing I hate more than lantern flies and that’s Apple Picking.
So, you get to the orchard and YOU pay the farmer to do a job for HIM (or her, settle down). I feel like when you get there you should clock in, pick some apples, and then get paid for how ever many hours you were working. You should then get a discount on the apples you picked if you decide you want purchase them… makes so much sense. OR the farmer could just hire actual employees to pick his apples and sell them to the local grocery stores. We then could just go to grocery store and grab them in a bug free environment, and put them with the rest of our groceries in the FREE bag that we brought with us.
I mean what are we essentially paying for? A picture of a day that we all wore matching outfits and were pretending to have fun in. Lifting the kids in the trees, telling them 10x not to eat the apples until you wash them, getting stung by a bee, or the kids want to go home because they hate bugs. My kids would jump off a cliff to get as far away as possible from a house fly. My favorite part of apple picking would be going home. And not so fast, you know you’re not leaving the orchard without all things apple and fall like. Apple Cider $7, Apple Cider Doughnuts $10 for a 6 pack possibly. Maybe you get a little crazy and take home an Apple Pie for $12. I mean holy shit, that is almost $80. You could’ve paid a photographer to meet you in the woods and taken some gorgeous fall foliage shots of your family and it would’ve been the same price. Or you could do what I do, go by yourself to ACME and buy a bag of apples and save $70!
People up North say Florida people aren’t smart, well I beg to differ. Maybe us Florida people think everyone here is just a bunch of “Apple Pickers.” xo.
This is 40ish 