The Big Pick

Sheffield Praise Day - the whole Church celebrating indoors; the Big Pick - out in creation enjoying the massive fruit harvest.  It may seem crazy to drive from Sheffield to Northampton just to pick apples, but that's only part of the purpose.  (Even when the sixth core value I've adopted is: "earn all you can; save all you can; and spend nowt.")  This was a 'Zion' occasion, the community heart of the Church.

Monday afternoon 11 August found a national leaders' event in progress at Cornhill.  There was a sudden intense hailstorm.  It dimpled the skin on the nearby apple crop, and wrote £20,000 off its market value.  However, we have a second product string to our New Creation Farm bow, which is pure apple juice.

 If we could get the crop harvested and sent for pressing we'd save some of the lost revenue.  So, picking wasn't the "treat 'em like eggs" procedure that I recall from several other years.  We had big crates to fill, and you could throw down the picked apples in handfuls.

The sun was glorious, but the unusually warm October was giving way to something more average.  And the orchard fields were muddy!  We'd brought along Nkakasang from Botswana and her friend - suitably togged up - and a bunch of Eritreans.   Titus was delighted to find that the fruit at the treetops also needing picking, and spent much of the time swinging from branch to branch.

We broke for a tea break in the grading shed yard, where a phalax of barbecues and trestle tables were being laid out for the bring-and-share lunch later.  Then we crossed to fields near the rail line.  I hadn't been to these rows for some years, when I remember they were planted with soft fruits like blackcurrant.  In between I caught up with Ralph about a trip to visit Sokie in Malaysia, and tackled Huw, our caretaker Apostolic Leader, about another key leaders meeting in Sheffield.

Jimmie Norden (of Zambia fame) had borrowed a drone to do some overhead videoing. (You can catch the whole production at http://jesus.org.uk/videos/special-short/new-creation-farm-view-above).  Then the call was, "Lunch time!", and the tractors came to cart away our efforts.  No-one seemed in a hurry to rush home.  After, Andy Lantsbery, the fruit 'manager', told me we'd lifted 30 tons.  It's an interesting life we've chosen.