Grapefruit, anyone?

After being gone for 5 weeks, I returned home and decided it was time to get busy picking some grapefruit. First, I removed all the ones I could reach from the ground. Then I used my 8' picker-on-a-pole for the ones I could reach that way. But inside the tree there are so many dead branches that get in the way. So, then I climbed up on a ladder to remove some of the dead branches. That didn't work too well. Then I climbed up on the ladder and used the pole picker and removed the high up grapefruits on the outside of the tree. And for my last trick, I climbed up inside the tree on the branches, just like when we were kids. It's a pretty good climbing tree, but there's still lots of fruit way up high, inaccessible mainly because of the old dead branches inside.

After picking all that fruit, what do you do with it? I put a few bags full out by the curb hoping someone would help themselves and take them away. They didn't. I bagged up about 20 more bags full, some for me to juice later, and some small yucky ones to be thrown away on trash day. The rest will be loaded up into my truck and taken to one of the Sun City collection sites where they will be donated to a Food Bank.

I could just hire someone to come pick all the fruit and haul it all away for a rather nominal fee. I'll probably consider that next year. But in the meantime, I'll look for a tree trimmer to come prune out all the old dead branches.