Until I went apple picking in Hirosaki, Japan (Wow Place #18), I never thought much about fruit gathering as a popular recreation. I mean, the trees just sit three. Now, if there was a windstorm, with my fruity targets darting in and out of reach, that would be a challenge! Or if the tree tried to swat me, like the Whomping Willow in Harry Potter…that would be exciting! But a sedentary, non-sentient fruit tree? Where’s the fun in that?
Recently, however, I’ve changed my tune. Maybe it’s because Apple Town in Hirosaki offered such amazing, sweet, gigantic apples, just asking to be plucked. Or perhaps because Apple Town in Hirosaki offered us a complementary guide who instructed us on the best apples to look for (Hint: the key is the angle at which the apple grows from the branch!)
Whatever the reason, I’m now hooked on fruit picking. I just love getting up in that ladder and searching for the fruit with just the right size, color and ripeness. Could I have been a gardener in a previous life, perhaps?
What Brentwood, CA, lacks in customer service (compared to Japan), it more than makes up for it in terms of the sheer quality and quantity of its fruit. Located just 50 miles east of San Francisco, this tiny rural town is THE place for fruit picking in the Bay Area, offering dozens and dozens of orchards to choose from, all crammed into a compact, 5-mile area. Many of Brentwood’s orchards offer “u-pick-‘em” service, meaning that upon entering, you receive a bucket, you walk into the trees, and you pluck as many peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots as you can carry (and afford). Most orchards charge by the pound (not by the minute), with the going rate hovering around $4/lb.
Our journey starts with an orchard specializing in “donut” peaches and nectarines – an unusual variety characterized by its flat, circular, donut-like shape, with a shallow indentation in the middle rather than a hole. What a unique, delicious piece of stone fruit — especially the nectarines, which are about the size of silver dollar but packed with flavor!
We buy 5 pounds of “donut” fruit for $20.
We then move on to the strawberry patches. Although they’ve been picked over pretty well by the time we arrive (it being near the end of the strawberry season), the patches still have a LOT of strawberries – some sweeter than the others, depending on the type. I’m struck by the dark, vibrant color, as if they’ve been freshly painted that morning.
We buy 5 pounds of strawberries for another $20.
Next it’s apricots. Then corn. Then onions. (Yes, Brentwood is more than just fruit)
By the time we leave town, we’re out about $70, which is crazy because there’s only my wife and I in our household! How are we going to eat all this produce before it starts to go bad? It is time to take up jam making? Perhaps we can share with our friends? Not the donut fruit, surely!
Considering all the strife going on in the world right now, handling our fruit consumption issues is a pretty manageable problem to have.
(It’s fascinating how our interests morph and change over the years. When I was young, I would certainly have scoffed at anyone interested in farming or gardening. “That’s for old folks who can no longer travel in a backpack or zipline or white water raft.” And now here, I am, in my 60s, enjoying the simpler pleasures: walking through a well-tended garden, enjoying the colors, picking a ripe piece of fruit and biting into it. The through-line is still variety, diversity and novelty – the backbone of travel – but my interests seem to be more on the micro than the macro level.
What activities drew you in when you were younger? What was the core attraction? Is it still the same now? Has it morphed? Aristotle said, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.” What is the throughline from your childhood that has made you the person you are today?)