Malibu, California Jan. 18, 2007

[Jessterw]

Love grapefruit juice, but I've never been big on the fruit itself. Massive quantities of sugar always accompanied any partaking of it.

Otherwise, love citrus. Probably why we always have as fresh a supply of oranges and other citrus fruits around the house as we can (along with bananas, cherries, and strawberries... mmm, miss the Strawberry Festival, I do).

[Dr Mordrid]

Our strawberry festival is a great place to get thoroughly stuffed

Only thing better is when the apple crop comes in. Then we go to Apple Charlies Orchard, which is about 2 miles from our family farm.

There you can get ciders, applesauces, all varieties of apples & pears, fresh baked goods with & without apples/pears, honey from their own hives, carnivals and even hay rides on a cart drawn by Clydesdales.

They even have a barn-restaurant that has a stage, band & dancing and a petting zoo populated by farm animals, peacocks, turkeys, pheasants, llamas & alpacas.

The kids love Apple Charlies

[Brian Ellis]

Bumper crop here, from my garden
Merlin orange: 1 tree loaded with c. 200 oranges, c. 20 already picked
Valencia orange: 1 tree loaded with c. 100 oranges
Grapefruit: 2 trees (different unnamed varieties) 1 with c 150 grapefruit, 1 had c. 100 of which 30 picked, juiced (7 litres) and frozen
Mandores: 1 tree with c. 300 mandores
Clementine: 1 tree now has c. 150 clementines left, but we have been eating 4-5/day since 1 December, probably had c. 280.
Lemon: 1 tree with c. 400 lemons
Pomelo: 1 tree which had 28 fruit, averaging 1.8 kg each, of which 7 have been picked

The only negative is the mandarine tree, which has 1 fruit, but this fruits only every other year; last year we had hundreds.
As there are only two of us to eat all this, we supply the neighbourhood. The amount of fruit is an embarrassment to us.

We don't need any vitamin C tablets!

[Dr Mordrid]

Sounds like us with our yearly crop of Waltham butternut squash, which are meaty, very sweet and tasty with small seed chambers. Each weighs in at 6-12 lbs. and we pick dozens over a month long harvest from 2-3 plants.

Sometimes they go so wild they climb the oaks and we have squash 15 feet in the air

[gt40]

sometimes they go so wild they climb the oaks and we have squash 15 feet in the air

Gosh, we would never have heard of Newton if one of those had fallen on his head

[cjolley]

... Waltham butternut squash, which are meaty, very sweet and tasty with small seed chambers...

Baked, pan fried, grilled...
They are the best winter squash there is.