a day in the orchard

Today was my first day of work. I am thinning apples - which means we pick off the apples that are growing too close together so that the others can grow to a proper size and shape. For each species and tree size there are specific instructions. Right now, the row I am working on, I have to leave apples that are 10 cm apart. The rest I pick off and throw on the ground. It seems like a waste of fruit and it goes against everything I've been taught, to hurt trees. One of the guys at the hostel, his job is to rip the leaves off of grapevines, so it could be worse.

We work from about 7:30 until 4:30. Most of the people at the hostel I'm staying at are working in agriculture - either in apple thinning, or fruit and vegetable picking. Most of them are young German backpackers. I'm sharing my room with two nice German girls. They spent their mornings sitting on a machine that drives through the fields slowly as they cut vegetables off the vines. They come home covered in mud because it's been raining this weekend. On Sunday, they invited me to go to Cape Kidnappers to see the gannet colony - gannets are a type of bird. It's a 10 km walk trip along the beach. Then a 25 minute uphill walk (I skipped that part as there were some gannets kind enough to make their nests on some rocks near the beach so I didn't feel inclined to do the uphill walk to see more), and then a 10 km walk back. It took about 5 hours in total. I'm glad I went and the weather was great.