Events like this, like the one I am going to tell you about today, remind me of how many kind and generous people surround me. I can feel it every day though so many different things. It is not that I am not grateful for it all on other days, but sometimes those stories may not be as interesting to others as I find them to be. But I think you will like today's event too, if you like citrus fruits. 🍊
One of my students, a retired man who has all his free time for activities he really enjoys, like learning to play the piano, told me last week to bring bags the next time I come to his place. Big ones.
If I didn't know him better, I might think all sorts of bad or crazy things... Why would a piano teacher bring bags to the lesson? But I am just kidding now, because I know he has an orchard. He told me that the oranges and tangerines are starting to ripen. And there are.... a plenty of trees. More than you can imagine, as I was also a bit shocked when we went to that orchard after our lesson today.
I couldn't count them all (the trees), but there are several sections:
The section for oranges that are the best for making juice.
Then tangerine trees.
Then, a section of really sweet table oranges.
Several trees of grapefruits.
A few lemon trees.
He and his wife live alone; their children are all grown up and don't live close. Picking and consuming all these fruits just by the two of them is impossible. Not even a small percentage...
In the past, they used to pay workers to pick the fruits and sell them to fruit shops or to the market; however, everything changed. The supermarkets and fruit shops buy cheaper imported fruits, coming from far and picked many weeks before they are mature. Those fruits are stored in cold to survive the time spent in transportation and then in warehouses until they arrive on the shelves of the stores. Having so many orange groves here in the Valencian region and buying fruits of much lower quality is insane, but that is how it is...
The sweet and healthy oranges are wasted... Unless you have many friends, family, or piano teachers 😂 who like tangerines and oranges, and you invite them to pick and take everything they want for free. The piano teacher can bring her husband as well (his legs can be seen in the next photo behind the tree haha) to help with the task.
He got some orange clipping scissors from my student. The sweetest tangerine tree got attacked! 😂
It was like a fruit heaven where you can pick what you want and how much you want!
My poor husband carried the full bags of fruits we picked to the car... it was a real workout. 😜
The result is this:
At home, we measured the weight of the bags and found out that what we see here is ?? kilograms of tangerines, oranges and some grapefruits. 😯 I will give a big part of this to my son to take to Valencia and share with his roommates. I will also share it with a friend of ours and with the first neighbour. But my student said... next week, bring bags again! 😂
Did I just forget to write the number of kilograms...? No, I wrote it and deleted it, as maybe a guessing game can come? 😉
Can you guess how many kilograms of fruit we bring home?
