At least part of Willow Lakes RV Park at one time was an orange grove. Back in some of the undeveloped areas, there still are orange trees. We availed ourselves of these oranges when we were here three years ago and we could hardly wait until they ripened up this year. They weren’t quite ready up to the time of our departure to the North, but when we got back it seemed they had pretty well ripened. The trees no longer are tended so they don’t produce huge quantities of uniform oranges like in the commercial groves, but they still are sweet and very juicy, just a little hard to get to with all the “jungle” that has grown up around them. Shown to the right is our first batch of the season, and below is our “super duper juicer” we found via Craigslist and finally the finished product. We gave the small container of juice to one of our neighbors as a partial payment toward the future use of their pole-mounted orange picker. We won’t be drinking juice from frozen concentrate – at least this Winter – just fresh squeezed from FREE oranges. Ahhhhhhhhh.
Your description sounds like the commercial Bing Crosby used to do for orange juice. It must be great to have something that fresh and not from concentrate. Bottoms up!! :-)
ReplyDeleteNice:) WE have stayed in a few places with old fruit trees. Makes a nice add on to the stay.
ReplyDeleteHard to beat fresh from the grove orange juice especially when the oranges are free. We've seen several neglected groves bearing For Sale signs in the Arcadia area.
ReplyDeleteThere are citrus trees in our park, nothing beats fresh picked grapefruit for breakfast, oranges for snacks, lemons for cooking, doesn't get any better than that.
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