JennyC wrote:
"Jaques d'Alltrades"
The message
from "JennyC" contains these words:
snip
All I know is that Brambly are bugger to pick. Huge high trees
and
really large fruit, so that you have to run up and down the
ladder
a lot :~(

Yes, if you let them run away with you. Our trees (when I was an
anklebiter) were no more than fifteen feet, with a trunk diameter
of
around twelve inches at the bases.
We used to run up and down them in plimsolls.
Rusty

These were not my trees........I used to work in the orchards in
Kent
back in the 70's :~)
Enormous wooden ladders, canvas backbags, did my shoulder in :~(
Jenny

It occurs to me, in my Professor Branestawm mode, that there may be a
solution. I have no idea if it would work, but what about a long
narrow tube of cloth, like a skinny giant's stocking, with a hoop of
wire, cane, or withy at the top? You take the hoop end up the tree
with you, leaving the floppy end in a wheelbarrow; drop each apple
into the tube as you pick it. Would the cloth slow down the apple
enough to prevent bruising? Would there be a way of stopping the
whole thing blocking up at the bottom and leaving you clutching a
floppy ten-foot stick of apples?

--
Mike.