Harvesting Oranges

These are the first orange trees I have ever seen!

Today, I saw my first citrus trees! I joined our harvesting coordinator Heather and a refugee volunteer to harvest 2 orange trees this afternoon. It was a last minute harvest; the homeowner called us concerned because the meteorologists are forecasting a freeze this Friday.

I was SO excited to harvest citrus! The orange trees were beautiful..and there were so many oranges!  I learned how to properly pick the oranges off the tree and I also discovered that orange trees (at least this kind) have prickers on them. Unfortunately my hands and forearms are significantly scratched up, and I have two spots in my fingers were little thorns went in, but harvesting the oranges was so fun that I didn't mind.

The woman who owns the trees also has three lemon trees and one grapefruit tree. The lemons aren't ready yet, but the grapefruit was.

A lemon tree, but the lemons aren't ripe yet.

This lemon looks riper than most of the others.

We tried a grapefruit and it was bright red, tart and juicy. I couldn't keep the juice from dripping on the ground and stinging the cuts on my hands. We decided to leave most of the grapefruit on the tree and to come back another day to harvest the rest. Grapefruit trees are hardier than orange trees are, and the longer grapefruit stays on the tree the sweeter it gets.

           The grapefruit tree. 

Grapefruit up close!

The beautiful weather made it a perfect afternoon for harvesting. The Sudanese refugee we worked with has been here about a year, and it turns out that he was a farmer when he lived in Sudan. He said the climate was similar and they had a lot of similar fruits there: grapefruit, oranges, lemons, but also mangoes.

The amount we harvested was incredible. From just two trees, we had seven crates full of oranges, equivalent to about 400 pounds of oranges. 400 pounds, from just two trees. And this is after some of the homeowner's neighbors had picked some of the fruit, too. As I was picking oranges, I started thinking, how can people be going hungry when our natural trees and plants can produce so much food? These experiences make me question, once again, how we distribute our resources. It makes me thankful that I work with an organization trying to prevent food waste. Think about how many people 400 pounds of oranges can feed.

400 pounds of oranges, 50 pounds of grapefruit. 

Looking at food growing naturally helps me refocus my thoughts. Food doesn't come from a factory or from a building or a from shelf, it comes from the earth. God created these plants and trees to provide sustenance for us (among other reasons), and maybe that's why it's so therapeutic and meaningful for me to harvest and to eat gleaned fruit.

It's also exciting because at the store yesterday, I "flirted with" the idea of buying a couple oranges. I resisted, though, because I am trying to stick to buying fruits when they are in season, and I knew that we would be getting citrus throughout the winter. Lo and behold, today we harvested oranges, and I now have some oranges and a grapefruit in my kitchen waiting to be eaten. I think eating them will be far more enjoyable and meaningful since I picked them from a tree instead of from a grocery store aisle.

My next goal...harvest a lemon tree!

Oranges on the tree.

This was the lone orange growing up from the center of the tree.