Picking citrus

Just thought I’d share.
Since we live where it’s too cold for citrus, we make a few trips to the Phoenix valley. This is us after an eight hour day picking in Sun City/Peoria. That’s 20 58 gallon drums full, and we had some in the trunk of the car. On the one grapefruit tree pictured there was six and a half barrels of tasty pink grapefruit.
We juice and freeze and can the juice, and we eat them out if the withered peels well into summer, and we share with all our friends and neighbors.
We will be picking two or three more times, since more people get added to our schedule every year. We get lots of grapefruit, (pink, white, and ruby red) valencia oranges, navel oranges, tangelos, tangerines, and lemons.

Hope it’s ok to post this.

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Wow! Wonderful! What memories projects like that make for your whole family!

Unlike peaches, you can stack 'em high and don’t have to worry about processing or eating them within a few days.

Thank you for sharing that!

Feeling like I’m living in the wrong climate right now. That’s a lot of fruit! I picked fresh grapefruit and other citrus in Feb in Florida and I realized after tasting it what I had been missing out on.

What a fun photo! Thanks for posting that. What an amazing amount of fruit! Wish I was on your “friends and family” list! :slight_smile:

Yesterday we drove around unloading as much as possible everywhere we went, and wishing we had more people on our friends, family and neighbors list…well maybe not neighbors, as we like the rural country feel (grin) but you get the idea.
Thanks for all the positive feedback. I wasn’t sure where to put this post, since we don’t grow the fruit. I was relieved when it was so well received.

I think its a safe bet that photos showing fresh picked fruit (self-picked, non-commercial) will always be welcomed and well received here and I think you put it in the right place! We have very few citrus folks here (or at least they don’t talk about it much) but I think thats just because of its limited growing climate. I suspect every last one of us would love to have an orange tree or two if we could! BTW…if you don’t mind me asking, about how much did you have to pay for the oranges you picked…and since I don’t know much about how much citrus weighs, maybe you could give an approximate price for one of those 58 gallon drums full of oranges (at u-pick prices). Thanks. Now…lets see what we can do about getting me on that friends and neighbor list…I’m only 1500 miles away!

Thanks cityman. You certainly sound like a friend to me, though you may not be close enough for sharing to be practical.

That load was definitely over 5000 lbs. and would be worth close to $3000.00 at you pick prices.
It was all free, and we will actually be paid to pick the next load.
Its really hard to beat a deal like that. :slight_smile:

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Picked another huge load today. It’s almost seven and we’re heading home. I hauled a ton today…and will probably feel it tomorrow. I’m pretty sure I’m a gonna sleep good tonight.
Tomorrow we’re all going to be back at it cleaning up the cottonwood hubby cut down yesterday, and removing another huge cottonwood. We’re planting seven English walnuts this year, and these are the last trees we need to get out of the way.
So happy that the shade trees we’re putting in will also make food.

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