We’re always super nervous for our first apricot delivery. Even if a growers crop makes it through late season frost, they are still very susceptible to hail and wind damage. So when we got a call from our grower saying they were going to begin harvest, we jumped at the chance to see it for ourselves, something we’ve never done before. We made the trip to the Palisade area in Colorado to see something new (to us).
The pickers were hard at work picking by hand when we get to the apricot rows. This farm uses over a dozen pickers all summer long for their organic fruit orchards.
This year we ordered 10,000 lbs of Colorado organic apricots! This trailer was loaded when we arrived with 4 of the 18 bins they had yet to pick.
Row after row of hand picking, it’s finally break time. While the harvesters rested, so did these ladders.
Once the bins are filled on the trailer they are forklifted off and loaded onto a gooseneck trailer for delivery to us in Glenwood!
24 hours or less after harvest, the apricots are delivered to us!
This was the largest single fruit delivery we’ve ever got, so I had no choice but to take a cheesy picture.
Once we got all the apricots inside, we wait for them to ripen to juicy and liquid perfection. Then comes the real hard part, hand processing 10,000 pounds of organic apricots!