Apples and Pears and Missing Appliances

Susan texted me around noon yesterday and said she was getting ready to pick State Fair apples. I have a State Fair tree, but it didn’t produce this year. (Sometimes trees that produce heavily one year take the next year off.) She had told me I could have some State Fair for apple pie filling if I wanted them. Usually I use Duchess of Oldenburg apples, but her Duchess tree was also on vacation this year.

I use what’s available. The husband doesn’t care as long as apple pies appear on the menu.

I grabbed my new harvesting apron—thank you, Amazon—and headed up the road. We spent the afternoon up in the apple trees:

We got the State Fair and Summer Rambo apple trees cleaned off, then picked one of her pear trees (the name escapes me). This was an entirely fabulous way to spend a September afternoon. The temps were perfect, the skies were blue (smoke has not yet come in from California), and Susan is a delightful harvesting companion.

She showed me the grafted trees she started:

These include a Westfield Seek-No-Further (scion wood I ordered from Fedco) and a Northern Lights from her tree, both for me. She also started a Duchess for me, but the graft didn’t take. She said she would try again next year. These will be ready to plant in our orchard next spring. Yay!

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I’ve had the Billboard Tarps website open on my desktop and have been checking it every day in the hopes that they would restock the 20’ x 60’ recycled billboards. I refreshed the page yesterday and saw that they had ONE tarp that size back in stock! I ordered it. We’ll put that one on the strawberry bed and move the other ones over to other places that need to have some weeds killed.

I also spent some time in town yesterday trying to buy a refrigerator. Freezers have been an extinct species now for many months, but I did not expect fridges to suffer the same fate. We don’t NEED another refrigerator, but I thought it might be nice to have an extra one out in the old garage, smaller than a full-size fridge but larger than the dorm fridge we keep on the porch to hold eggs during the summer. We can’t run the porch fridge during the winter because it gets too cold, and I don’t have room in the house fridge for that many eggs.

I tried to do some research beforehand, checking Lowes and Home Depot websites and making notes what appeared to be available. When I got to Lowes, however, I discovered that a) there were no employees in the appliance department and b) the stock on the floor bore no resemblance to what had been listed on the website. After 20 minutes of trying to find a live human being to talk to, I left and went across the street to Home Depot.

The Home Depot employee in the appliance department basically laughed at me when I said I wanted to buy a fridge. They can order one, but—as has been the fate of so many items since the start of this pandemic—most of the fridges seem to be stuck on slow boats coming from China. I’d like to have this fridge before the wedding in case we need it. The guy who was helping me said that was doubtful. He wouldn’t sell me a floor model.

I went back over to Lowes hoping that a human being had appeared in the appliance department while I was away. Nope. I found a woman in a different aisle who told me that she wasn’t even a Lowes employee—she was a contractor—but that she had been pitching in when she could, which was mostly to tell customers that no one was staffing the appliance department. I then spoke to another couple who appeared to be waiting, as well, and they told me that apparently, several Lowes employees in the appliance department had either been laid off or quit. Furthermore, those employees had not, for whatever reason, maintained the database showing what items were in stock, so what was on the floor and in their warehouse bore zero resemblance to what was listed on their website. Instead of being on the floor talking to customers, the new employees were in the warehouse trying to figure out what was available for sale.

I think the small Sears appliance store in town still has a fridge for sale; I looked at it earlier in the week. I will call today to find out. We can pick it up on date night tonight.

I’ll be making apple pie filling today and getting back to sewing eventually.