Treasuring the Harvest

The rain comes down with a cold bite.   But, sometimes the sun shines brilliantly.   It’s harvest time in the temperate zone and that includes here in Michigan.

Honey Crisp.  It’s a type of apple that sells for a very high price because of the good taste.    But, it turns out that you can go to orchards and pick these apples up from the ground for about 1/10 of the price.     There they have been discarded by the pickers, for any slight blemish.  What a treasure of goodness that is at risk of being lost.   I hear that blemished apples used to be made into apple cider but that this is now disallowed.   So, they are left on the ground.

Meanwhile we harvest our habanero peppers with great care.  Each one is almost like a precious baby.     At this time of year a killing frost is possible at any time and the habanero pepper bushes are still full of green peppers, and we are running out of warm days to make them ripen.  So harvesting the ripe ones has the feeling of treasuring each day of warmth.   ( I think that the worm compost and growing them in large pots helped them flourish a bit better this year.)