An expedition into unknown territory: one beautiful, cloudless day in September at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, and we decide to journey to a nearby apple orchard, previously only glimpsed through the window of the shuttle bus to and from the local shopping mall. Undaunted by the towering chickenwire fence, plastered with 'Private Property' signs, we squeezed through an opening and into a veritable Garden of Eden. The knowledge we gained was not of good and evil, but of something much more precious: the deliciousness of stolen apples, warmed by the sun, seasoned with adventure, and how such aforementioned apples could be trasmuted into a plethora of baked goods (see later posts).
After seeing how easily our backpacks could be filled with forbidden fruit, we made many more trips to the apple orchard and the adjoining pear orchard and fields of raspberry plants. At one time, we were chased by a tractor and a farmer whose wrath we could only imagine, since we escaped into a nearby forest. Another time, we went at night (after the tractor incident), dressed all in black for ultimate stealth, and spent a lovely evening picking apples, filling our bellies with late raspberries, and star gazing on the steps of the nearby mansion.
The morality of our actions is questionable, yes, but one could argue that we are simply gleaning, akin to the french glaneurs of old. After the harvest, these ingenious peasants snuck into the fields and pilfered the leftover crops. In some places, gleaning was a legal right and a bell would be rung to let the gleaners know when they could enter the field; in others, farmers were ordered not to harvest to the edge of the field, so better to facilitate the gleaners. This information is courtesy of the film The Gleaners and I, recommended by the authors, and shown during Bard College's Language and Thinking Program.
For more on what to do with gleaned apples, look to further blog posts. However, they can be consumed as snacks and, if left in a dorm common room, will be gone in under two days, so be ready to share. We found several varieties in the orchard: a large, green apple, better for baking, and a smaller, redder variety, which we believe to be Red Delicious by virtue of their color and flavor. In the pear orchard nearby, several kinds of pear could be found, and behind the trees in the apple orchard there were rows upon rows of raspberry plants (look for berries low on the plant, where they are less likely to have been picked already).
That's all for now - we would like to thank Montgomery Place for their (unknowing) generosity.
it's MEEEEE!
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