{"id":117622,"date":"2014-09-24T21:04:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T03:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/harvest-time\/"},"modified":"2014-09-24T21:04:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T03:04:09","slug":"harvest-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/harvest-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvest time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Unsure
Unsure of which apple might be better, Cory Dondlinger rotates bites between apples in each hand. She was helping her mom at the U-Pick day in the CSU Research Station orchard.<\/span>Sam Green\/Cortez Journal photsos<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

By the time the gates opened at the Colorado State University Extension Apple U-Pick event in Yellow Jacket and 9 a.m. Saturday, hundreds of people had lined up at the gates armed with bags, boxes, buckets and an appetite for locally grown apples.<\/p>\n

Just two hours later, nearly every tree had been picked clean.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is not much left,\u201d a volunteer said, to those arriving at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n

Those that slept in, were forced to choose between the less popular varieties: Golden Delicious and the Pinova apples.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Honey Crisps went first, the Liberties and the Royal Empires followed,\u201d said Tom Hooten, CSU County director extension agent.<\/p>\n

Hooten counted 175 people lined up at the gates Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

There weren\u2019t as many apples to go around this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the freezes Memorial Day weekend and a couple days after,\u201d Hooten said. \u201cThree consecutive nights of temps in the mid 20s \u2013 that\u2019s not good for apples.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Golden Delicious apples, however, fared well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were higher up in the orchard, and cold air tends to settle, so they produced well,\u201d Hooten said. \u201cWe had a lot of golden delicious, but people do prefer the red apples.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooten said some varieties handled the cold temperatures, while others didn\u2019t. Some of the trees were bare of fruit before the apple pickers descended, and others had very few apples.<\/p>\n

The event was still a success. Families trucked through the orchards with big smiles on their faces, snapping photos, sampling the different types of apples and offering picking strategies.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t go for the little ones, they will make your stomach upset,\u201d one mom told her daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cUp here, I found the perfect apples,\u201d another said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t eat that one, it has a worm hole,\u201d another mom said.<\/p>\n

In total, about 500 people made the trek to the Southwest Colorado Research Station in rural Yellow Jacket, and a total of 7,691 pounds of apples were sold. Those numbers were down from last year, when nearly 800 people attended the U-Pick event, and nearly 12,000 pounds of apples were sold.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe even had apples left over last year,\u201d Hooten said. \u201cWe were loaded with apples last year.\u201d<\/p>\n

New this year was the music stylings of the San Juan String Band, a band made up of local public land officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople loved the band,\u201d Hooten said. \u201cWe are trying to add a few things to make it more of a community event.\u201d<\/p>\n

The band yodeled, sand songs about apples, a teddy bear picnic and warned children about playing with matches.<\/p>\n

In addition, Battle Rock 4-H members sold food, soda and cold water.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a great fundraiser for them and a good way to make it a community event and provide food and drink for participants,\u201d Hooten said.<\/p>\n

People came from as far away as Kayenta for the event.<\/p>\n

Most people talked of turning the apples into pies, apple crisps and sauce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

go first as hundreds line up to pick apples in Yellow Jacket<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":117623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6363],"tags":[188,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-117622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ds-news","tag-dolores-star","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117622"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=117622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}