I spoke with the owner of an orchard shortly after 9/11 when suspicion of "foreigners" was at its peak. It was very difficult for migrant workers to travel and do their regular work at many of the farms and orchards in Michigan where they had worked for years. There was also a fairly high unemployment rate in the area where this orchard was located because of the closure of a local factory, so they hired former factory workers. She told me that the migrant workers could pick 13 of those big wooden boxes full of apples in one day, but their white American counterparts could only pick 1 box a day. A lot of apples went unharvested that year.
I can pick enough lettuce for dinner for four of us in about 15 minutes. It takes my son, who is blind, about 30 minutes to do the same job. But that's OK, because it really is all relative. He will (probably) never get a job picking produce for a living. But he can certainly harvest enough to supplement his family's nutrition and reduce food costs. He will also be able to save on transportation costs to get that food from a store, and contribute positively to the local food movement - you can't get much more local than your own backyard!
The trick to learning to harvest is to start with vegetables that are easiest to pick tactilely. Those are vegetables that can be harvested without having to search all over, and that are picked based mostly on size or other tactile difference. Lettuces and spinach are perfect, as are herbs, green onions, radishes and potatoes. Potatoes are great because you really can't harvest those effectively visually! If you have your crops in the square foot gardening system, you can tell your child to harvest box number 1, squares 1-4. I've sometimes referred to the squares as Braille cells with eight dots (like computer Braille, or Braille cells with a cursor like on a BrailleNote), and sometimes even the location of the boxes themselves are best described as a part of a Braille cell.
From lettuces and crops that grow close to the ground, you can move onto peas. English, or shelling peas, actually sound hollow when the peas are just the right size and when the vines are lightly shaken, so you can harvest these by sound! Green beans are easily done by size, but you might have to look around a bit more to find the beans and differentiate those from the stems.
Most difficult are berries - strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blueberries, because you generally have to look all over for the berries and it can be difficult to tell if they are ripe or not, but if you are really paying attention, you can tell that ripe fruit is actually a little softer than underripe fruit. When in doubt, just taste it to see! But raspberries and blackberries also have thorns. My son loves raspberries so much he is willing to risk a few pokes in order to get a few berries for our supper.
Zucchini and other squashes are tough, too, because you have to find your way through the spiny leaves and stems or vines to get to the fruit. Eggplants also have spines in surprising places. Tomatoes, however, can be both a real joy - the joy of that first huge beefsteak! and a huge challenge, as there is always fruit that has rotted and you either get your hands in it or step on it, and it doesn't matter if you can see or not!
Again, you need to be patient and have a willing subject! Some kids will want to learn to do this and some won't. But if you are an adult who has always had a garden and you are now losing your vision, don't worry! You will soon learn to feel your way to harvesting just like a pro!
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