Ragnhild, one of the producers for the Co-op, invited LMK members to help with harvesting apples and pears at her orchards in Simrishamn. She needed a total of 2000 kilos of cider apples and offered the orchard visit with fika, lunch and as many pears as we wanted to take in exchange for help with apple picking. Stuck behind a sauna, so Swedish.
Ragnhild’s orchards are on several acres along the coastline of Österlen, about an hour drive from Lund. The weather was perfect so lots of volunteers showed up. Again we were invited to pick as many pears as we wanted to take home while waiting for everyone to arrive. The year has been ideal for pears and they are crispy, juicy and full of flavor so we just kept picking! Guess we’ll be giving some to friends and neighbors and experimenting with pear recipes. They are several European varieties like Conference, Comice and Bosc.
After touring the orchard, picking our pears, fika with apple cake, pumpkin soup lunch and apple cider sampling, we spent a couple of leisurely hours gathering the last of the apples, most of which were out of reach without the picking poles. Note for next time that the early pickers get the easy-to-reach apples. It felt like slow going but we met the day’s goal of 700 kilos by 2pm! And I got a bargain on two crates of last season’s bottled cider, which I’m going to boil down into apple syrup for cider caramels! We require the mega brick of smör.
And here’s a little gallery of other photos from recent days… Italian cooking at Andrea’s, seeing our friend Dom perform at Malmö Opera’s show Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Nori living her best life, some scenes from my walks around Lund.
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