Yankee Ingenuity

Here's the ingenious fruit picker my uphill neighbor taught me to make. He gave me the bamboo pole - it's about 15 feet long - and I supplied the soda bottle.

I have reinforced this one with duct tape because the first one I made fell apart quickly through pulling hard on all those recalcitrant apples.

All you do is position the square opening in the picker around an apple, maneuver the notch in the bottle bottom (between the two white tapes) around the stem of the fruit, and pull! The fruit drops with a little plop! into the neck of the bottle.

Don't I have clever neighbors? All my friends and family who've gotten applesauce think so!