We affluent metropolitan dwellers are always on the prowl for fun things to do in the maze of a mega city. Amongst the expat community in Beijing, the latest "activity" fashion is to go out to the suburbal farms/orchards and pick fruits and vegetables. *grin* So Olof and I happily drove 1 hour out to Beyond Organic Orchard in Shunyi to pick apricots! Embarassingly, I did not know what fresh apricots looked like before this. Hhhmm, do you?
Rumours have it that this orchard used to be a play ground for the Chinese riches but has since been abandoned. It is not officially certified as organic but no chemical fertilisers have been used on the soil before, hence it can be "counted" as organic. Of course, there is more than just using chemical fertilisers in organic certification. Anyhow, we were two happy "fake" farmers ready to harvest fruits of the hardwork of the real farmers.
We arrived, in fact, a little late and missed the rest of the group, who diligently woke up super early in the morning to pick the freshest of the cohort. Under the early afternoon sun, we took with us two pails and walked briskly on the soft soils to the endless rows of apricot trees. But we were a little disappointed when we began hunting for ripe fruits to pick. It seemed that the morning "fake" farmers have picked most of the ripe fruits, leaving us with infantal ones to ravage. A little disheartened, we wandered deeper into the orchard, hoping to spot some orange fruits hanging from the trees while we fended off bugs of all sizes and kinds and grass of all cuts and heights.
"Darling!" I shouted. "Look at this tree!"
There it was - branches full of round and orange apricots beckoning us. The two buckets were filled to the brim in no time - almost 5 kg in total.
We were two happy farmers now.
No comments:
Post a Comment