Get Fruit For Free And Go Preserve Crazy!

This Sunday we were on a mission to get as much Fruit as we could for free. After our very successful day it got me to thinking.

How can everyone, whatever the country they live in, get free Fruit?

I will tell you about our day and it should answer that question in part. I will then give you some more ideas. Becoming more self sufficient is all about spending as little as you can and making the most of what you can get for little or no cost.

The Fruit For Free Mission

Our friends have a small Orange grove by the river where they have a small rowing boat moored.  They wanted to get it out of the water so we offered our services.  It only took a few minutes to drag it up the bank and flip it upside down for a few repairs to be made.

In return we were told we could pick as many Oranges, Clementines and Lemons as we wanted.

We did.

Free fruit tastes all the sweeter!

There is tons there and even though we picked hundreds it made no impact really on what they still have.  An offer to help someone out is a great way to get a bumper crop of free food.

With all these free fruits Mrs. Dirty Boots has started to go preserve crazy!  She has begun making Orange Marmalades of  different recipes.  There will be lots of great marmalade recipes coming to the blog soon.  I will be squeezing Oranges for fresh juice for months to come as Oranges seem to store very well if kept cool.

Now with all these Oranges and Lemons in the Car we next went to the house of some other Friends.  They wanted Lemons for preserving and boy did we have Lemons!

We gave them a basket of Lemons and for that we were told we could have a load of their Sour Oranges in return.  They actually didn’t turn out to be as sour as expected and have a lovely tang to them.  Great for eating but also fantastic for Marmalade.

The day was a success.  We did a bit of work in return for free food.  We swapped some of the Fruit we got for a different variety that we wanted as well.

It is activities like this that can make living more self sufficiently both fun and very productive.  You can’t beat getting stuff for free!

Ideas On How To Get Fruit For Free

Be cheeky. Phone around different Orchards in your area.  You will be amazed how many places will be happy to let you have the windfall for free.  Much of it will be great for preserving in any number of ways.

Offer your services. Offering a partial days work can often result in you being offered to help yourself to whatever fruit is being grown.  Again, don’t be afraid to phone around and see what is on offer.

Put up an advert. Put an advert in the local area or in a free paper.  You will be surprised how many people have overgrown Orchards or abandoned plots where they will happily let you take whatever you want just to help clear the fruit away from the ground.  You really will be surpried how many abandoned fruit tree plots there are.

So, get out there, get yourself some free fruit and follow some of the many preserving/canning fruit recipes Mrs. Dirty Boots will be posting all throughout our various growing seasons.

For a more self sufficient future