The Lost Art of Stealing Fruit | Hacker News Reader

The Lost Art of Stealing Fruit

newyorker.com

144 pointssamclemens113 comments

The article tiptoes around the issue of "stealing" referenced by the headline, as if the "stolen" fruit is only taken from public property. As you will learn if you plant fruit trees in your front yard, there are quite a lot of people who think nothing of trespassing on private property and stripping your trees. In Hawaii it's become an epidemic - most of the stolen fruit is not consumed by famished thieves, it is sold at farmers' markets. Penalties are so minimal for this crime that the same thieves return over and over with no fear of being caught.

Thi issue has many of my fruit-growing friends ripping their hair out. Believe it or not, not all residential fruit trees are neglected afterthoughts - many of us put blood and sweat into these trees and live for the day we can harvest them.

Great point. I, as a farmer, do own quite a lot of wallnut trees that could be mistaken for public property. I am ok with random people picking random wallnuts, but most of the theft is done by organized groups that resell my fruit on farmers market. Each year I do think about reporting them to police (as amount of fruit stolen is higher then treshold of breaking law), but then I realise that amount of trouble I will get them into and probable damage to their life is higher than some wallnuts I just let it go. Now I just hope that the area will get rich enough that they will just don't care about picking my fruit and I will finally get something more then just few lefovers.

Is it really you getting them into trouble if you're doing your diligence as a farmer/business owner?

You didn't make them take the product in the first place, and your hope about poverty going away(..area will get rich enough...) strikes me as naive.

> strikes me as naive

This is interesting because your viewpoint focuses on the law and who is technically in the right, while his viewpoint values community cohesion and well-being. This tends to be the line between conservative and liberal viewpoints regarding treatment of lawbreakers - hard line reactions which favour the capital holder versus rehabilitation, decriminalisation, consideration of the social fabric.

That said, stealing someones walnuts and reselling them is a douche move. Being a centrist, I'd recommend approaching them about it and providing a warning. If you'd prefer not to approach, leave signs near the trees indicating theft will be reported and what the punishment could be. If they don't heed the warning then report them. The correct answer is often somewhere in the middle.

Community well-being would be not reporting those who just take and eat/keep/etc his walnuts.

On the other hand, these people are deliberately stealing his walnuts and re-selling them. There's no community well-being here to preserve, they are stealing and profiting.

> There's no community well-being here to preserve, they are stealing and profiting.

I agree that they're stealing and profiting from someone else's resources but there is a community cost to someone receiving a criminal record or worse for a relatively minor crime. And was it a friend's son or someone else only a few degrees of association away?

They should be punished if they continue after being warned but when the punishment exceeds the grade of the crime, anyone concerned about community would stop to ponder the cost-benefit of reporting the thieves. What we should have is punishments that better suit the severity of the crime, like community service.

In the Everyone Wins category: the thieves apologise, return the remaining walnuts and any money made, and offer to help the owner tend to their house and garden. Alternatively they can sell the walnuts on the owners behalf, generating money without having to pay for labour. In the everybody loses category: you strip someone of their ability to get certain jobs due to a criminal record and they turn to more crime to make up for the shortfall in income. Or you send them to jail and rather than having a well-tended-to garden your tax dollars are paying to have a harmless thief in prison.

Police can be asked to give warnings. It goes a lot further than a property owner

Can we perhaps instead of 'punished', maybe 'brought to justice' or 'rehabilitated'? Negative consequences should be focused on making the affected persons whole, and secondarily on getting the person to the point where they're not likely to repeat the crime. Insisting on proportionate suffering is in my opinion morally dubious, and risks devolving into "eye for an eye" mentalities, or worse.

I bums me out that simply interacting with our criminal justice system can be so ruinous that people are reluctant to report crimes.

This is an excellent point. In the US there is no good path to reform of felons for instance. People ought to have a reasonable path to redemption.

Using the law to enforce a point is always equivalent to the use of physical force. The law simply provides such a vast weapon that the party in the wrong must back down or die.

If you wouldn't be willing to hold a gun to someone's head to make them change their actions, then you shouldn't call the police.

This level of understanding is a rare find, thank you for looking deeper into the situation and choosing a very daoist choice, a Middleroad

Are they aware that it's private property and your maintained trees? If so, and if you don't want to involve the police you might also consider a "name and shame" approach at the market itself by simply asking (loudly) "Why do you keep stealing the nuts from my trees and selling them?"

Edit: at the least they could provide you with some of the gathered /picked nuts.

Now that's a good suggestion. Social pressure is a perfectly valid means of retribution that doesn't require the overwhelming threat of the law.

> I am ok with random people picking random wallnuts

Is that typical for farmers? Like if I'm walking past a field of corn (or whatever) and I take some for myself (not to sell) - they are OK with it and don't consider it stealing?

(I've never done it, but been tempted - not because I can't afford it, but because it looks really fresh and tasty :)

I have a commercial blueberry operation. So long as you're hand-picking, and not doing it for commerce, help yourself. The amount you take will be trivial when compared with the amount taken by animals.

Besides, I can't begrudge anyone who loves blueberries.

Is there much overlap between blueberry farming and traffic modeling?

No one cares (as long as it's within "reasonable" proportions). Any animal would happily eat 10 times the amount of corn you took.

And, man, we're loosing so much fruits, because of global warming and cold snaps nowadays... If you find a few appealing apples on the way, please, enjoy and don't waste them.

Although if there's a cash register or mailbox nearby, the farmers would of course prefer to get paid.

Typical prices in grocery stores for apples seem to be around a dollar a pound, but apparently farmers get roughly a third of that: http://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/apples/comm... I'm sure they wouldn't mind you cutting out the middleman if it meant a little extra for them. But so far all the apple picking operations I've found are tourist attractions, and charge even higher prices than a grocery store.

Unless you're leaving the field with 5kg of apples, I doubt they'll care. But, this is coming from someone who plant fruits to eat them. We're not selling anything to grocery stores.

If the ownership of the land is a little ambiguous, you might want to try a few simple 'please don't pick the walnuts, these trees are on private property' signs. It will stop some people convincing themselves that it is probably ok to do.

Do you also believe that code should be open source?

And how much blood do you put into your trees?

There's a pretty marked difference - using code doesn't consume it.

But don't we put "sweat and blood" into our code as well? Don't we, in fact, put more effort into our code than into our trees, which the sun freely shines on and which (in Hawaii) the rain freely falls on, on the earth a patch of which you call your property for reasons no more clear than the reasons you would call a piece of code you wrote your "intellectual property"?

Are the birds that eat the grapes and crap out the seeds stealing? They are propagating as they consume. Are your neighbors that eat the grapes and crap out the seeds merely consuming? Why is it that for your average Westerner, nature is always something consumed? Is it not more like a "given" resource that some of us put effort into harnessing, much like the free flow of ideas is directed into computer programs?

My point is that people will come up with no end of arguments for why code should be free, yet I just knew that the top comment on this post was going to be some moralist maintaining the importance of private property in one sphere, while implicitly maintaining the necessity of its transgression in another sphere.

I've got two fully mature plum trees on my property that are fruiting so well this Summer. In Spring, I released 9000 lady bugs to ward off another aphid infestation, which ruined the trees last Summer. I tend to the trees daily, removing rotting and diseased plums so to give other plums a fighting chance to ripen.

The neighborhood is home to a fairly large quaker parrot population, whom I allow to eat from the top of the trees. The bottom half of the trees is netted so that the parrots won't clear out the entire crop.

When I first bought the property, two years ago, I was shocked to find an entire neighborhood accustomed to helping itself to the plums-- without permission and without any kind of exchange from their own gardens. They had a prior relationship with the prior owners and expected grandfathered rights of some kind.

Most of the plums I pick I end up giving to neighbors, friends, family, co-workers. It's a lovely time of year.

If anyone is in the NYC area and would like some, drop me a message :)

> I was shocked to find an entire neighborhood accustomed to helping itself to the plums-- without permission and without any kind of exchange from their own gardens

Several of my neighbours tell us and others when their raspberries and currants are ripe, there's simply too much for them to eat. I wouldn't continue without invitation from a new owner, but why would you not invite others if you have more than enough for yourself?

Every neighbor who I speak with gets an invitation. There was a population, though, that felt it unnecessary to establish even the most basic personal connection before helping itself.

The practice of the poor being able to take unharvested crops for themselves goes back to the old testament. It was an early form of social weldare.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning

I think the key was that the gleaning you mention was collection of unharvested _leftovers_, whereas the article talks about waltzing into someone else's yard and taking things off of their trees. I didn't notice the author implying that it was limited only to trees/plants that they knew were in a post-harvest state - it seemed rather the opposite.

Might depend on your area of the world but around here you've only got a few days between the fruit ripening and the birds eating away at it, so ripe fruit on a tree is fair game.

Misc responses:

It's common to see people harvest blackberries, mushrooms, chestnuts.

Sustainable Ballard organizes gleanings from the local public market. Here's one of their projects. http://www.sustainableballard.org/food-gleaning/ I hope this practice is widespread.

My city has a couple groups that will come and harvest your trees. https://www.cityfruit.org/great-seattle-fruit-harvest

Find food near you. https://fallingfruit.org http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/04/23/178603623/wan...

I was once told that one of the bluesky uses cases for Google Maps was to enable someone to publish urban food sources. That person had a map online for while, much like falling fruit above, but I can't quickly refind that URL.

Urban food gathering always reminds me of Octavia Bulter's "The Parable of the Sower", where the protaganist is very resourceful. (A fate I hope we manage to avoid.) http://octaviabutler.org/2017/03/parable-of-the-sower-new-ed...

Non-mobile link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning

Oddly The Book of Ruth and the word "gleaning" are some of my most vivid memories from high school English.

"gleaning" information from something is basically "to take a richer understanding from something where the information comes to one freely, based on observance"

Meaning - freely available fruits of knowledge can be derived from that which - its basically a pun.

The fact that we lost the meta-knowledge around etymology is a sad thing...

There is a podcast by an etymology guy that has amazing insights to words - but, in my limited experience listening to him, lacks some meta meaning -- in that glean means to to take free fruit, glean means to see deeper info, glean means to harvest deeper info from the free info given, knowledge is thought of as fruit...

I was wrong -- it is known:

>>>glean (v.) Look up glean at Dictionary.com early 14c., "to gather by acquisition, scrape together," especially grains left in the field after harvesting, but the earliest use in English is figurative, from Old French glener "to glean" (14c., Modern French glaner) "to glean," from Late Latin glennare "make a collection," of unknown origin. Perhaps from Gaulish (compare Old Irish do-glinn "he collects, gathers," Celtic glan "clean, pure"). Figurative sense was earlier in English than the literal one of "gather grain left by the reapers" (late 14c.). Related: Gleaned; gleaning.

so.... to collect (information) from....

> There is a podcast by an etymology guy that has amazing insights to words

I do not google and go directly over to complain about lack of the relevant hyperlink.

Now, to my surprise there are quite a few linguistic podcasts.

Oddly enough, s/high school English/mandatory Bible reading in Catholic school as a third-grader/ and it's the same for me.

This comment is a fine Proustian madeleine, if I may :)

It undoubtedly predates the old testament, which is why it just says "described in the Hebrew Bible" in that Wikipedia link. You can't really invent scavenging leftovers. The rules the old testament added, was to ensure there was something for those, presumably desperate, people to find.

I guess the modern equivalent is supermarkets letting people take their unsold or out of date food?

Interesting, the french word is close to the english one: « glaner ».

Well, after a quick look at the dictionary, it appears that the English was derived from the French. This is hardly shocking as a great deal of French words entered the English language when the Normans conquered England (1066).

It's called "Pe'ah" (corner) and it's in the Hebrew Bible.

See http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/961516/jewish/...

It applies to grain harvest and fruit trees and is taken very seriously here in Israel.

But what does the bible say about intellectual property? :)

Quite a bit! A number of discussions in the Hebrew Bible:

https://torahlive.com/articles/halacha-teachers-articles/201...

To follow the rule of the land is ironically not very helpful for israel law.

The example of the copied mishna is ironic, because the plaintiff didn't write the selected parts, neither.

The comparison of IP to fish is a huge stretch. Illegal Encroachment is one thing but comparing people to fish is another. Still, I derived a new to me interpretation of intangible (as in not yet caught fish [and thus possibly not going to be caught either])

While the last example is rather topical, it contains no value judgement and still concernes tangible matters. What do the scholars have to say about reasoning by analogy?

Sure, the argument of upfront investment entitling to its fruit is compelling, but it's a slippery sloap init? Its from a time when selling people was a thing. I wouldn't give it too much thought. The article is very one sided and holier than thou in this regard for lack of a better word. (edit: forgive my ignorance, if the slave example is ill conceived)

My town in years past, as part of a tradition, planted fruit trees throughout the parkways. Cherry, plum, apple, etc. They are left mostly unpicked today. I believe they were planted to be picked, by visitors to the parkways, to be able to grab down a plum for your daughter on her tricycle. And I do. Especially the cherries.

I was picking some mirabelle plums from the tree in my garden in West London (this is a few years ago).

Some passing teenagers asked what I was doing, so I offered them some plums, straight from the tree. "No way! My mum only buys fruit from Waitrose!"

A much younger girl and her granddad took a few, although in this case it was grandad that was reluctant.

It's a shame. Neighbours complained about the fruit making a mess on the pavement; if it wasn't that that particular neighbourhood was special and had a requirement for the trees to be maintained, I'm sure they'd have been replaced with something more friendly to Lexus paintwork.

We have been collectively programmed to trust the grocery store product over what we can reach out and grab.

I've long since thought municipalities should plant fruit trees where they can, but I think most people would not eat the fruit for fear of not knowing if it's some poisonous variety.

There are some delectable looking blackberries that grow in some parts of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, but I've never picked them for fear they might be poisonous.

Why not find out?

I'm not in North America, but I eat wild blackberries whenever I see ripe ones. From what I can see with a quick Google, all blackberries and black raspberries in NA are edible and delicious.

I love the idea of food forests and the work of groups like Food Is Free (http://foodisfreeproject.org/).

I don't currently have land, as I live in an RV and travel kinda full-time, but when I buy another house and settle down somewhere, I've sort of made some promises to myself:

1. I will not mow a lawn.

2. Any plant that requires maintenance has to provide food.

So, I'm looking forward to having neighbors steal fruit from my yard. I want pecan trees, and fruit trees, and blackberry vines, and prickly pears, and whatever else grows well where I'm living. I'm gonna rip up the lawn and replace it with edible plants and gardens.

Any one fruit tree makes more fruit than one person, or even family, can eat in a season...sure, you can can it, or freeze it, but I like the idea of grazing through the seasons, rather than hoarding.

I don't want to discourage you, because i had the same dream 5 years ago. But what you are saying has gotten VERY expensive. As an initial investment (at least for me, I have very few to share plants/seeds with) its pretty high. Then you have some deer take out a tree and all the berries, so you need to invest in deer block (chemical or physical), then you have the fricken EAB borer killing your 30 year old Ash Tree, and the black fungus that's taking out the pear and cherries, and then you forget to close the fence one day so most of the cucumbers and beans go missing and the rest get taken out by the cucumber beetles and/or the wilt they carry with them. Oh, and i invested about $200 on some "deer resistant, rabbit resistant" flowers (useful flowers like sage and lavender) which slowly disappear each season.

In other words, start saving now :). Though I haven't checked your link yet, so maybe the solution is in there!

You should move to the Columbia Basin, try Richland, WA. I lived in the area for a few years and I had a great garden, along with many of my friends and colleagues. Land is inexpensive, we had 1/2 acre, you could easily get 2-3 on the edge of town for a few 100k. There were minimal deer in the desert. The odd squirrel would take some fruit. If you were closer to the mountains you might have to deal with elk in the winter. Lavender grew like weeds and never disappeared. Water was super cheap from the river and most houses have timed irrigation so you don't need to remember to water. Also, tons of sunshine during the long growing season.

We had more mulberries than we could possibly eat, passersby would frequently "steal" them from our tree.

Was it a lot of work, yes, did it pay for itself, no probably not, considering the low price of excellent produce at the farmers market, was it a fun and rewarding/learning experience, yes.

Yeah, I've had a house and gardens in the past. I know it's a pain in the ass and doesn't always pay for itself. But, it's also possible to pick things that are naturally hardy and suited to the climate and soil. Some things Just Work.

And, if you have enough of those that are very expensive at the grocery (fresh herbs like basil and parsley, tree nuts, avocados, come to mind, though the latter two take years to start producing) you can still come out ahead. And, food picked ripe is delicious and rare in grocery stores.

On the other hand, my neighbors drive me completely nuts. Each on the cul-de-sac has an acre or so, and i'm the only home-farmer. The rest barely go outside let alone grow some veggies...

Its bizarre and a little infuriating.

Yeah, the folks with soulless lawns and no food growing are a mystery to me. Why have land, at all, if you aren't going to grow something on it?

And groundhogs... Those damn groundhogs.

A relative has a fruit tree out front. He does not particularly mind when somebody walking by takes a piece. He does mind a good deal when somebody comes along with a shopping bag and starts to load up.

Sounds like he should give cuttings to the neighbors, so they can all have fruit trees.

Considering that he lives in the town with the state's land grant university, I don't think that the neighbors are short of options. Nor his is the only such tree in the neighborhood. There are four or six within a short walk.

I think you'll enjoy this short video[1]. It's about a couple in the south of NZ that purchased a small piece of land with a rundown house and transformed it into an 'edible garden' of sorts. They developed a very 'non-interventionist' form of permaculture.

I found it fascinating and inspiring.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GJFL0MD9fc

I did enjoy that video. That's a cool couple of acres. That's kinda my vision, too. It's hard to do near a city (too many misguided laws), so that's frustrating, as I don't really want to live in the country.

"2. Any plant that requires maintenance has to provide food."

After consulting my tree hugger friends, I made sure to plant a variety of plants, which bloom throughout the year. Food for the hummingbirds, bees, butterflies, etc.

It was expensive, but I'm not a very good deal hunter.

Those are good, too. Keeping pollinators happy is part of the maintenance of growing food plants. That said, many of the things pollinators like, at least in areas where I've had gardens, are wildflowers and grow like weeds (and are treated as weeds by many) when given a friendly environment. So, they can be very low maintenance.

A trio of artists in LA started a project called "Fallen Fruit" centered on appropriation of public fruit:

http://fallenfruit.org/about/

SF people may have seen them last month at:

http://fallenfruit.org/fallen-fruit-magazine-san-francisco/

They have mapped out fruit trees that extend into public right of way (there are a lot), hosted Fruit Jams where you could bring your own backyard fruit and herbs and collaboratively make jam, and guided nocturnal forages to harvest public fruit. It has been a delightful way to look again at the food that is around us.

This one's global:

https://fallingfruit.org/

The German-language equivalent is https://mundraub.org -- also global, but most useful in German-speaking areas.

Walking around London yesterday morning for an hour (with a step ladder!) we managed two carrier bags of tasty ripe plums. I also ate some orange things that I have no idea what they were but they tasted fantastic. There's raspberries, blackcurrents, blackberries and even (in an abandoned lot) tomatoes which my friend ate. I missed the mulberries this year but in a couple of weeks I'll also have some apples and avocados to add to that and maybe some persimmon. And this is all stuff that'd be on the floor and/or rotting later without people blinking an eye. So many fruit trees in London! And that's not even mentioning the mint, huge basil tree-bushes, rosemary, lime trees and countless other herb lying in clear sight.

Possibly kumquats?

Edit: which reminds me of a local restaurant which has possibly the best play on words name out there: Kumquat Mae

Those are unlikely to grow in Southern England, it's not warm enough.

Mirabelle plums? [1]

Try taking a photo and asking iNaturalist [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabelle_plum

[2] https://www.inaturalist.org/computer_vision_demo

I'm not sure it's smart to eat any random fruit you encounter. But I guess if it was poisonous it wouldn't be allowed to just sit there on the street.

There are plenty of poisonous plants growing all over the world. Not eating them is personal responsibility.

Several of the ones you've possibly heard of from Harry Potter or general folklore (monkshood, wolfsbane, deadly nightshade, mandrake) are poisonous and wild (sometimes common) in Britain.

I've known daffodils, foxgloves, rhubarb leaves, holly berries and others were toxic since early childhood.

"...or the vast banks of blackberries that litter Britain’s parks and heaths, largely overlooked except by the occasional elderly Pole or Czech..."

Not so Up North.

I have had convivial blackberry picking sessions with many people from all walks of life as a native Brit. A good wash and pick over, then a crumble and for the last box boiling with sugar and straining to make a compote served with yoghurt and those rusk cakes. I hit the canal towpaths and nature parks in preference to road side plants.

I will be researching this mulberry gin...

Or in East Anglia.

One thing i've noticed on my walks in the country is that there are a lot of apple trees growing along the Iron-age tracks like the Ridgeway, Icknield Way, etc. I suppose once one traveller has thrown away an apple core, and a tree has grown from a seed, there are plenty more apples with which subsequent travellers can repeat the process. Iterate that over a thousand years and there's quite a collection.

Apples may not be such a great choice for that - they don't reproduce to the same type from seed, many of the resulting fruits won't be much good (if you get any), and you need at least one other compatible apple tree in close proximity for pollination.

Basically the fruit is based on the tree you have, but the seeds in that fruit are a combination of the trees.

I can't read the article (no subscription), but I wouldn't expect many blackberries to be left in the South -- except near a busy road. If nothing else, there are enough thrifty Northerners around :-)

I tried a couple of times to pick them from near the tram tracks in South London, since that's far away from any pollution, but they'd always gone before I got there.

Not sure where you are, but there are tons of blackberries growing around here in Essex way. The fields near here are almost entirely lined with them, as are the forests and other semi rural areas. I think they were used as barriers between fields at one point and have massively spread out since then.

And yes, I do sometimes see people picking them, along with the other fruit that grows in the area.

Having juat learned that half of my prine tree was emptied out I have I a hard time right now enjoying this article.

O well, I was somewhat consoled by my neighbour how pointed me to 'Les glaneurs et la glaneuse', a documentary by Agnes Varda about people who try to live on waste fruit and vegetables in Paris. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gleaners_and_I

Sorry, but i need to know... prine tree?

A what tree?

I think that's a typo and it should say prune.

Prunes are dried plums... you don't pick them from a tree.

French Prune and Italian Prune are the names of some European plum cultivars typically grown for the purpose of being dried, however they are also quite good eaten fresh.

In Romanian we still call plums as "prune", directly from Latin. My brother has lots of plum trees on his property (at the foot of the Carpathians) and most of the plums are used for making an excellent țuica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C8%9Auic%C4%83), while the rest is dried up in order to be eaten during the long winter months (my grandma makes an excellent dried-plums soup).

Yeah and Kleenex is a brand of facial tissue but when you sneeze what do you ask for? I'm not aware of a "prine" tree and neither is Google so I think the intention was to type "prune" since u and i are neighbors on the keyboard.

There's an interesting story about mulberry trees in the UK:

"Elizabeth I, sent some mulberry trees to Reading to encourage a silk industry there - the leaves are the sole food of silk worms - but it was James I who got serious and ordered them by the thousand because he wanted to take control of the silk-making business the from French.

Unfortunately, the scheme failed because the gardener planted the wrong sort. Silk worms eat the soft leaves of Morus alba but had no appetite for the leathery leaves of Morus nigra, the tree that produces such delicious fruit."

From http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/3311801/The-fruit-of-qu...

I'd love to try making mulberry gin like they mention. We make damson gin each year in Autumn which tastes awesome.

My big incentive for picking the fruit is because it is not available in stores: mulberry and crab apples are featured in the article but my favourite one is amelanchier (known by many other names [1]). Also, Bunias [2] which I - unfortunately - cannot find in North America, but can be approximated by a mix of broccoli and arugula.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelanchier [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunias_orientalis

Wow I never knew before the berries on an amelanchier are edible.

Some of my fondest neighborhood memories are of neighbors inviting each other over to pick their fruit trees. My family had some apple and black cherry (this was in Canada) trees; other neighbors had plums or blackberry patches. Sometimes people would even put out a board at the end of the driveway inviting others to come take some fruit so it wouldn't go to waste.

Edit: I think a lot of people have ambitions of canning or some such when they plant their fruit trees, but it's a bit of a lost art now. I don't know anyone who isn't a grandparent that actually knows how to preserve fruit.

I taught myself canning this summer. I was surprised how cheap and easy it is to get started.

Basic primer: - you preserve foods by heating them to drive out air, kill bacteria, and activate the adhesive on the lids to seal the jar - high acid foods (salsa, pickles, citrus, many fruits and jams, etc) can be preserved by submerging in boiling water for 10 minutes (or more, based on altitude). This is called "water bath canning" - Low acid foods (meats, veggies, etc) need to be heated to a higher temperature (~245 F) so you need a pressure canner. I have not tried this yet.

Equipment: - a pot, rack (makes dunking/lifting easier), funnel (makes filling jars so much easier), jar lifter (for lifting hot jars out of boiling water). There's a kit here: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B002KHN602/ - wide mouth mason jars (about $1/each at Amazon or Wal-Mart)

I did typical nerd internet research, but it all coalesced to http://www.simplycanning.com. Good material, clear instructions, good recipes. She sells a book and ebook, but there's plenty of material on the site to get started.

I've had so much fun doing it that I've made way more than I can use and opened an Etsy store - https://www.etsy.com/shop/seattlesweetness. It's a really satisfying break from all the mental work programming.

I am slowly, year after year, adding space to my fruit/vegetable garden. I've learned to pickle and preserve vegetables and fruits. I've also made cordials, but haven't (yet) tried fermenting the fruits directly.

The problem I run into is that I cannot go through everything I produce. There's only so many jams, chutneys, syrups, cordials, pickles, and canned pears that one can eat. I give away a lot, but it's also sort of a lost culture that gives/receives canned foods.

It's definitely still around, and probably in a resurgent phase - see places like Serious Eats (http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/02/how-to-can-canning-pickli...). I have several young (~30yo) friends who do it.

We have many fruit trees (Several peach, couple of apple, pear, a nectarine, and an apricot).

When harvest time comes, we pick what we need and want to use or process, then advertise to the neighborhood that they are welcome to come and pick.

Often, no one wants to invest more labor than to pick up a box off the porch.

My parents have a guava and sour orange tree that grow along a very busy street in southern california.

The oranges look delicious, but are sour as hell. They are mostly used for marinades. I feel bad for the people that have been burnt on them.

The guavas are fantastic, but almost nobody in socal knows what a guava looks like. Once in a while someone will recognize the guava tree and gorge themselves. Considering good fresh guava is not only hard to come by, but around $8/lb if you can find it.

$8/pound for guava sounds real expensive. I can get real good Mexican guava for around $3/pound at this grocery store in North Carolina: https://www.facebook.com/Compare-Foods-Winston-Salem-NC-1196... (I suppose this varies according to season).

Side note: I was born and spent a lot of time growing up in Brazil and like Guaraná in soda/soft drink form (Antarctica brand). I didn't think I'd find it when I moved here, but this store had four pallets of the stuff on display on one of my first visits.

Probably more of a regional thing. Lots of Guava is grown and sold in Florida because of the demand. I suppose that makes it easy to get up the east coast at a lower cost.

Guava doesnt grow well on west coast (at least on the commercial scale) and there is much less demand, so that's why prices are so high.

I'll assure you it's not a lost art where food is relatively expensive/people can't afford it. It's a good sign when people spend so little of their income on food that the temptation to steal is severely depressed.

As a counter point, I grew up in India where there is still some malnutrition and I stole mangoes. I was definitely not poor and my family could afford mangoes and they did buy mangoes. I stole with a bunch of friends and it was the thrill of the act rather (getting chased by the owner) than the fruit which made us stole the mangoes.

My guess is that the childish prankish appeal will fade as the the need to steal for sustenance fades in the distance from social memory. I think, though certainly could be wrong in my guess, is that this behavior is just a vestige of the primordial reason for stealing.

At least in the US, it can be complicated, many reasons drive theft. I remember lots of kids shoplifting candy, none of them poor, when I was a kid.

Interesting NPR article on it. "People with an income of $70,000 or more are 30 percent more likely to shoplift than those earning less" http://www.npr.org/2011/07/14/137627302/sticky-fingers-hidde...

Of course, that covers items beyond food, so perhaps not a direct comparison.

"earning less" than what

Unsuprisingly, NPR is misleading to create a more salacious read, and they failed to cover their tracks:

https://books.google.com/books?id=EchKhEduEBwC&pg=PT50&dq=Pe...

The research found that people who are in stores more, shoplift more.

Which is the greater crime: wasting the fruit, or picking the fruit because someone else has legal title over the tree?

The former certainly seems more morally reprehensible.

That would depend on need. In most advanced economies sustenance is likely to be a very minor cause.

In any event, I'm not taking any moral stand on this, simply trying guess the disinclination to steal fruit.

Whilst I wish it was mulberry gin is not a common staple for the British public so I think this article is arguing for fun rather than subsistence.

Also have a small garden with lots of fruit. Plenty to go around so I don't mind other people picking as well. Though we have safety concerns - people climbing trees and so on. We like to be in hearing distance in case something happens, also we have some ladders and other tools harvesters can use and point out good spots.

Anyway my point is - just let the owner know. Most will welcome you and even assist. And make sure you are safe - no-one wants to come home and find a badly hurt stranger in his backyard. Also take care to not damage the plants.

The article generally leaves me with mixed feelings. Less about the stealing. More about common sense - there are many places where I just wouldn't pick fruits - like along polluted roads, heck in public parks there is even risk there are feces on the fruit. In the countryside there are snakes living in bushes making unpleasant encounters when unprepared. I see how the author paints it as romantic, but I feel she is more painting herself as "rebel" or "original" than actually giving advise.

I grew up stealing mangoes in India as a kid. There is something about raw mangoes that makes you want to pluck them immediately.

Anyone who loves fruit should watch The Fruit Hunters:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2182169/

Ideas for fruit to grow in UK/London climate? Are mulberries worth it?

Currently growing:

Apples

Cherries

Figs

Grapes

Blueberries

Raspberries

Tayberries

Lime and lemon (partly indoors)

Siberian kiwi (no fruit yet)

Goji berry (no fruit yet)

Honeyberry (no fruit yet)

And appropriating the neighbours' plums, pear and wild blackberries.

Yes, mulberries are worth it. They would be a very popular fruit if they could handle the rigors of transport.

If you can track on down in the UK I'd feverishly recommend Pawpaw (Asimina triloba), a custardy fruit with such tropical flavor you'd be shocked it is native to North America.

Thanks! Bought a new breed of mulberry for next year - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/feb/19/remarka...

I managed to find a supplier for pawpaw but not sure it will fruit in this climate

Nice to hear somebody mention pawpaws! Here's a short intro video/article: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2011/09/29/140894570/the...

Stealing is an Art?

Lots of wonderful things grow where I live! I'm particularly fond of the blackberries, lavender, and cherries. For berries and cherries I only take one or two very occasionally, and I never cut lavender, only rub my hand on it for the scent.

So in Turkey you can see orange trees on streets: https://i.imgur.com/MJck2yU.jpg

When I saw such pictures on Instagram I wondered what happens with the fruit, or if you are allowed to pick one (looks rather high though)

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