There is certainly a lot happening around here.The 15 bee hives to pollinate the kiwifruit came in on a truck about 10.30 last night. The air is full with the distinctive smell of kiwifruit flowers and is also now humming with bees. ( they alway move them at night so all the bees will be home when their house shifts )
I'm a bit sad I had to miss my usual P & Q group today,( and so won't get to see the finished bags I taught or the dolls some ladies made at the weekend ) but firstly the car had to stay over night at the garage till it's new exhaust pipe arrived and was fitted so it would pass it WOF it went in for yesterday...so no transport but also TOO busy. Busy at picking Avocados.
The hydraladas ( to reach all the high up fruit ) will arrive tomorrow so we wanted to get ahead of them and do all the ground picking we could before they got here. We do not want to pay someone else to do something we can do ourselves. So just the 2 of us spent the day picking avos from the ground using the long pickers and clippers. It was hot but some of the time we could get in the shade. DH picks and I clip the stalk to about 2mm and put it in the picking bag around my neck, so you understand if I say my back feels like it has had quite enough for today! ( couldn't really take a photo of myself doing that ) We noticed how quiet and nice it was with just us and birds singing in the bush nearby.( no machinery ) We are very pleased with what we got and stopped when we had 2 completely filled bins. Don't they look just yummy! I did a bit of quality control as we went along and put aside any fruit with faults, so the 2 bins that went on our truck up to the cool store at the pack house, late today, looked really good quality. What a shame the price we are going to get for them this year is so low, cause you folk buying them won't get them cheap....it's that dam NZ dollar again. Most of these Avos will go to Coles in Australia I think. Anyway I shall try and get some action shots of the rest of the picking tomorrow. I 've earned a drink!
Percy Peacock came to inspect what we had picked and I think I heard him say "Hello" , Meggie. And, "Yes of course I'll poise for a photo I am a peacock after all.
