Stay in Florida

Stay in Florida

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I have also stopped using cocoa mix with my cereal each morning and instead use non-fat instant (dry) milk. Cocoa mix is a little cheaper, but it is made from mostly whey, the liquid left over when you make cheese. I presume it is high in milk sugars, but has less protein and calcium. As I am really stressing my body now, I wanted the calcium and add sweetener as necessary to the instant milk. It comes in nice pouches and I use one third of a pouch with my cereal each day. Lastly, I had previously kept resealable half gallon containers of orange juice in my car and they kept pretty well. However, I found that frozen orange juice concentrate sometimes goes really bad (alcoholic and fizzy) after only 36 hours (in the one and only case I tried it). For now I am eating fruit in the groves while we wait or travel to get my vitamin C. I am not sure why concentrate didn't keep as well, but it could well be that my containers (and funnel) in the car are not nearly as sterile as the ones they use when they fill the resealable half gallon containers.
On November 12 we finished the Granada Ranch grove and moved to the Orange Avenue Citrus Growers grove on November 13. Here is a picutre of the entrance to the Orange Avenue Citrus Growers grove. The trees there are bigger (up to 16 feet tall) and the fruit is small. Now we are getting $9.00 per tub, but the result was less per hour for the pickers as it is slower picking fruit from a ladder (and more of the fruit has to be picked that way).
We went out with the regular nine, but came back with 15. I presume Louis went back to Carter's and got more pickers when he saw how long it would take us to fill a trailer. Here is tractor trailer with the trailer loaded with bins for packing fruit. When that trailer is loaded that would be about 64 thousand pounds of fruit. The juice trailers have sides about six feet tall and a back that seems to flap open when the front is raised (I have never seen that, but would love to work in a citrus processing plant for a bit and see the processing after the fruit is picked).
Here is a slightly better picture of a loader pulling a Porta Potty (better lighting), also from Carter's parking lot. When you are picking from a ladder it is best if you can keep you picker's bag in front of you resting on the ladder, but that requires a steeper incline for the ladder. That in turn puts more weight on the tree and increases the likelihood of the ladder shifting or rolling. I always climb with an empty bag and then fill it as I go down. This makes it most likely that the ladder will shift while you are climbing (and have an empty bag) and not while you are headed down.... This grove has narrower roads, just wide enough for the loader, but the trees are a bit further apart so you have to put your tubs between the trees (and the loader will make room for the tub by breaking branches if it has to).
Here is the largest orange tree that I have picked so far (November 14). I would guess it is about 16 or 17 feet tall, but it is effectively taller by a couple of feet when you are picking from the drainage ditch side. Fortunately it had really large fruit. I was pretty slow picking some of the fruit as ladders regularly shift and roll as you climb and/or shift your weight. At that height it made me nervous to use both hands to reach and pick and using only one hand really slows you down. Roger told me that in Orlando they used to have trees as tall as forty feet (but they were all killed by the frost). The newer groves are further south and not so tall (they prune them to keep them at a reasonable height.
Larger orange and grapefruit trees are sort of hollow with almost all the leaves on the exterior. This picture doesn't really do it justice (too much contrast), but I hope this helps get the idea across. Most of the fruit is hanging down just below the leaves so that sometimes it is easier to pick the fruit from the inside. There are also a few stray leaves and fruit in the interior (the fruit there is almost always green making it harder to see). In really large trees (like this) it can be a real challenge to get all the interior fruit as some is too far in to be able to reach from a ladder (which generally stays outside the tree) and some can be too high to reach from the ground. Of course, I love challenges so generally don't let many get by me (sometimes I have been known to climb the interior of a tree to get a particularly troublesome interior fruit).