Apple Picking

By Justin B-K

It was an early fall Saturday morning, the air was cool and the leaves glowed beautiful reds, yellows, and oranges in the early morning golden sunshine. One by one all the boy scouts arrived to Our Lady of Fatima to go off and do their good deed for the day. Once everybody got to the Church we headed off to Shelburne Farms. After only 15 minutes of driving we pulled up to Shelburne Farms. As we turned past the old barn and the 1924 Ford, there were trees as far as the eye could see, each one covered in apples with the morning dew still on the leaves.

The scout went off in small groups disappearing among the apple trees to fill their plastic bags. There were apples everywhere, all types, all sizes. Shelburne Farms has every type of apple you would ever need and we picked every type. By "picked" I mean we picked the newly fallen apples from the ground, the "drops" with permission from Shelburne Farms. Not every apple was OK. Some drops had started to rot or had holes. But most were perfectly OK. I know. I tested some!

It was generous of Shelburne Farms to let us pick up the drops. The drops may go to waste since people who pay to pick your own apples may not pick up the drops. Shelburne Farms has allowed Troop 63 to pick apples for the Sudbury Food Pantry for several years.

After filling many plastic bags full of apples scouts had to carry them all the way back to the parking lot, which I must say was not that close, at least with a load of heavy apples. In 2003 Shelburne Farms let us drive the truck up into the orchard to pick up the apples. This year we had to carry the apples back to the parking lot. It took the scouts a couple of stops to make it all the way to the parking lot with four heavy bags of apples tearing your fingers off. But don’t get me wrong, it was fun and for a very good cause.

After filling the entire back of a pickup truck to overflowing with apples we headed off to the Shelburne Farms store for a reward. They had everything "apple" that you would ever need from apple cider to apple pie to fresh hot apple cinnamon donuts. After spending time and money in the store we gathered together and took a couple nice group photos, like the one below.

As you can see, in the picture we were all having fun and our good deed. The reason that this was a service project is because we gave all the apples to the Sudbury Food Pantry.

The Troop 63 Apple Pickin’ Crew at Shelburne Farms

October 16, 2004

After picking the apples we had one more thing to do back at the church. We had to unload the many, many bags that we had filled. Everyone helped us take the apples down to the food pantry. The 44 bags of apples made the Church basement look like my room – you couldn’t see the floor! Now the apples can being enjoyed by families in Sudbury who rely on the Sudbury Food Pantry

We spent a couple of hours of working, having fun, and eating apples and at 10 we were off to do whatever we do on a Saturday, but because of our 2 hours of a little work some families in the Sudbury area can enjoy fresh, healthy, delicious apples straight from the orchard. . They may not even know of our Saturday morning Troop 63 service project.

After I got home and did what I do on a Saturday I almost forgot about my fantastic morning until dinnertime came. I had a fantastic apple crisp bought from the store at Shelburne Orchards and boy was it good. Overall it was a fantastic morning with good food and good service.