Down any winding country lane, in any park or reserve in most western countries, you are likely to find free fruit. Fruit that is just hanging around, fruit that nobody wants, fruit that will go rotten if it is not eaten. In many other countries, fruit trees abound in people’s gardens, or in the villages street scape. Jack Fruit in Sri Lanka and king coconut palms come to mind.
Fruit is the stuff of Adam and Eve. Fruit comes from trees - trees themselves that have grown on a whim or a seed. With not a supermarket within coo-ee.
In Kent, you’ll most likely find apple orchards. And on the sides of the lanes, there are usually trees, with branches full of their sweet juiciness. Griffith in the Riverina is Australia‘s undisputed orange capital, with farms to every horizon. Even with the thousands of acres, there are still trees left unpicked, or on farms for sale. Belgium, the land of the golden ale, has thousands of plum trees on the sides of roads. And Cowra? Ask me and I will let you in on a few sweet secrets.
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| converted Oast House, once used for drying hops. Kent, South-East England |
Mate, I am pretty sure fruit on farms for sale is not free. Probably best to not go saying it is free for the taking when there is a struggling farmer selling that crop to keep the struggling farm afloat until someone buys it to bail them out. Taking any sort of fruit or crop off private land is outright stealing regardless of how romantic the notion may sound.
ReplyDelete(third generation farmer)
Hi Anon, point taken, I have only done it a couple of times :)
ReplyDeleteCheers
Andrew