{"id":38246,"date":"2022-09-24T02:32:46","date_gmt":"2022-09-24T08:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fruits-are-booming-this-harvest-season-around-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:43:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:43:00","slug":"fruits-are-booming-this-harvest-season-around-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fruits-are-booming-this-harvest-season-around-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Fruits are booming this harvest season around Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Apples
Apples that have fallen off the tree pile up under a tree last week near Hermosa. This year\u2019s apple and pear trees and are so laden that branches are breaking with the weight of the apples, Tomas German-Palacios of The Good Food Collective said on Friday. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Apple, peach, plum and pear trees in the Durango area and the Animas watershed have been well watered over the summer, and it shows in the amount of fruit they are producing, according to members of The Good Food Collective.<\/p>\n

Rachel Landis, director of the collective, said apple lovers of the Animas watershed are in luck this year and should be excited.<\/p>\n

She said The Good Food Collective\u2019s gleaning coordinators gathered about 630 pounds of apples from just two trees on Friday. She said apples are biennial crops, meaning they produce fruit in \u201cmassive quantities\u201d \u2013 an estimated 2.3 million pounds during an average season \u2013 every other year in the Animas Valley watershed.<\/p>\n

It has been a good year for fruit harvests thanks to how much rainfall the area received, she said. As of Sunday, 5.7 inches of rainfall had been recorded at the Durango-La Plata County Airport, according to the Grand Junction office of the National Weather Service.<\/p>\n

Landis said she can almost taste the water in fruits she\u2019s picked. They don\u2019t have the same concentration of sugars that they usually do, making them less sweet than in previous years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing for most of our stone fruits here is when our last frost takes place in the springtime,\u201d she said. \u201cAll the fruit trees set their buds and their flowers and that\u2019s when those ultimately become fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n

If an unexpected late-spring frost hits fruit trees after they\u2019ve started budding, one\u2019s entire crop is at risk of being trashed, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of what we saw in some of our lower-lying colder areas here in the county and also in Montezuma,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Spring frosts might spell doom for fruit harvests, but fall frosts may make late bloomers even better.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrost is the name of the game for all things apples,\u201d she said. \u201c\u2026 A lot of the old-timers will say your fruit isn\u2019t good or your apples aren\u2019t good until the first frost hits because the apples will drop their sugars. And it makes the fruit really tasty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Landis said if people want to try fruit harvesting for themselves, they can learn more at The Good Food Collective\u2019s online fruit gleaning guide and program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, I think there\u2019s over 150 trees listed,\u201d she said. \u201cThese (belong to) members of our community who would love for people to come pick their fruit and put it to good use. If someone wants to get in on this amazing fruit year we\u2019re having they can go to our website and check that out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collective also hosts a weekly community harvest where staff members will supply gear and teach attendees \u201cthe wise ways of how to pick fruit,\u201d Landis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can take home as much as you want and the rest gets donated out to food banks and food pantries in our area,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Good Food Collective\u2019s gleaning coordinators gathered about 630 pounds of apples from just two trees on Friday. Rachel Landis said apples are biennial crops, meaning they produce fruit in \u201cmassive quantities\u201d \u2013 an estimated 2.3 million pounds during an average season in the Animas Valley watershed \u2013 every other year. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

And then there is the 14th annual Apple Days, \u201ca beloved community tradition\u201d at the Durango Farmers Market, scheduled for 9 a.m. to noon Oct. 8, she said. Starting on Oct. 1, the collective will host two apple harvests per day. The invitation is extended to \u201ceveryone and anyone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just going out to all the backyard fruit trees and all the abandoned orchards we can find to gather up as many apples as possible. This year, our target is 4,800 pounds of fruit,\u201d Landis said.<\/p>\n

The daily apple picking culminates at the 14th annual Apple Days where community members can work three \u201cbeautiful, old, wooden, hand-cranked cider presses\u201d to make apple juice the old-fashioned way.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it helps their (the farmers market\u2019s) farmers out a lot. They get good traffic that day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Landis said all of The Good Food Collective\u2019s resources online are in both English and Spanish and she hopes people will feel welcome to join the harvest regardless of what language they speak.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes at face value, you\u2019re like, picking apples, that\u2019s cute,\u201d Landis said. \u201cBut what we\u2019ve learned is how much it\u2019s this really amazing way to connect with people and this incredible place we live.\u201d<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

14th annual Apple Days Festival at farmers market scheduled for Oct. 8<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[364,568,1934,438,28,1269,3270],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-community","tag-events","tag-farmers-market","tag-food","tag-headlines","tag-nonprofits","tag-organic-foods"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246","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=38246"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83969,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246\/revisions\/83969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38246"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}