Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Walking Through the Cherry Trees
Hello, I’m Andrew…
and I’m the fruit pioneer at Urban Fresh Fruit...
I’m here to find the worlds tastiest fruits, befriend some farmers and then make sure that the bees do their job properly and pollinate the trees. I’m still struggling with that last bit. Any tips?
I recently went on a little journey to visit my European cherry farmers and here are some of the highlights, largely of the alcoholic variety, from my trip.
First stop was the cherry gardens, where after making lots of very enthusiastic thumbs up signals to our very hospitable non English speaking friends we were taken to the biggest cherry farms kitchen.
(The gardens did look lovely but my modeling career was blighted by some mean guard dogs to my left as well as those looming rain clouds).
Now it’s only 11am but despite our protests the very nice farmers served us up a glass of grappe, a whiskey, a bottle of water, some peanuts, a strange sort of bread stuffed with goats cheese and some yoghurt freshly made that morning. An interesting combo.
Hayley who doesn’t usually drink at all nearly choked on the grappe which they told us is home-brewed from cherries after the harvest and is a spirit of sorts with around 50% alcohol. So not my usual 11am snack but I’m a big believer of when in Rome….
Next day serious stuff laced with some firm but friendly peer pressure for another 11 a.m grappe stop. We’ve bought some fancy machines to pit the cherries much better this year so we don’t lose anymore sleep about you losing your teeth. In fact Ferreroz Rochez used to use it for their chocolates (before encasing them in alcohol and chocolate) so we’re sure it’s going to make a big difference.
Then we were taken off to sample the local cuisine which tested my when in Rome philosophy to the max. Sheep’s head for lunch, thankfully with some more awesome goats cheese stuffed breads and salads.
So not a meat eater or a grappe fan, Hayley found her happiness in the world’s largest Golden Delicious apple and some herbal teas that had been handpicked by the herb man straight off the side of the mountain.
Simple things please simple minds….
The fun part was the fact that despite not knowing a word of each other’s language we seemed to laugh a lot and agree it would be a great harvest. Using my very best sign language and dodgy foreign English accent (not sure why I always do that) I managed to find out for you that one cherry tree can make around 50-100 bags of Urban Fresh Cherries.
Quite nerdy I know but after that the hosts decided to impress us back with some knowledge of English by reeling off football teams ‘Manchester united, Tottenham, Arsenal’ it seems that some things you can’t escape no matter how rural you go.
