First harvest at the Grove

On April 28th, as planned, Mick Ryan came up from Donnybrook to harvest the first tranche of the Leccino.  It only took him till lunchtime to get 4 1/2 tonnes off 160 trees, but the loading of the bins was slow - he had to use his crane rather than the forks on our tractor.  In our own inimitable style, we managed to stuff things up.  That's why our grove has the nickname 'Murphy's Grove'.  (Murphy's Law.  That which can go wrong, will go wrong)  Our lovely neighbour John Tetlow came over and showed us how to change the bucket on the tractor over to the forks - it was quite easy once we'd been show how.  And then we discovered that the forks were set too far apart to slip under the bins.  Great if we were unloading giant hay bales.  John is going to do a bit of adjusting for us, and move one of the steel prongs in a little next week.  But in the meantime it slowed Mick Ryan down a lot.  I rang him later in the week and he said he'd got about 16% yield.  That isn't particularly high for Leccino, but ok considering it was probably a little early to pick.
Daryl had a good look around the grove and announced we had loads of fruit, and what were we going to do about it!  Exactly.  I should be down there now, organising picking and pressing of our beautiful new seasons oils.  I should also be attending the markets to sell off my end of 2012 stock.  But I'm not.  I'm sitting around home feeling weak and weebly and frustrated!  Please God I can bounce back soon